2025-2026 Course Offerings
Autumn
REES 20030/30030: Short Russian Novels
In 19th century Russia, the printed book was an emergent technology offering a new form of shared intelligence, challenging the Bible (which at that time was still primarily experienced liturgically) as the authoritative Book of life. In this course we begin by thinking about the book as a new medium and read some of the best examples of the short novel in 19th and 20th century Russia, considering how they create explanatory and moral authority by reflecting reality and imagining new ways of being. We will observe traditions established at that time, reading books printed on paper and discussing them in a public forum, the classroom, as they were discussed then in coffeehouses, intellectual circles, and salons. We will consider the functions of literature and the roles played by authors, printers, critics, and readers. And we will read some of the best works in the Russian tradition, finding throughlines from the golden age of Russian literature (Pushkin, Lermontov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy) to 20th century socialist realist and science fiction dystopias (Platonov, Solzhenitsyn, Strugatsky Brothers), and considering how Panaeva and Chukovskaya chart a distinct path for women writers and express alternative perspectives on Russian realities and potentials.
This course fulfills the GATEWAY requirement for REES majors matriculating in AY 2025-26.
(CMLT 20030 / CMLT 30030 / ENGL 20030/ ENGL 30030/ FNDL 20030)
REES 24220/34220: Anxious Spaces
This course explores built (architectural), filmic, and narrative spaces that disturb our bearings, un-situate us, and defy neurotypical cognition. In the sense that "angst" is a mode that can be understood as both stalling and generative, we analyze spaces and representations of spaces such as corridors, attics, basements, canals, viaducts, labyrinths, forests, ruins, etc., spaces that are 'felt' as estranging, foreboding, in short, anxiety-provoking, in order to understand why-despite or because these topoi are hostile-they are produced, reproduced, and craved. We will pay special attention to abject spaces of racial and sexual exclusivity, sites of spoliation, and of memory and erasure. Among our primary texts are films by Kubrick, Tarkovksy, and Antonioni, and Chytilová, short fiction by Borges, Kafka, Nabokov, and selections from the philosophical/theoretical writings of Bachelard, Deleuze & Guattari, Debord, Foucault, Kracauer, and the edited volume, Mapping Desire, Geographies of Sexuality.
(ARCH 24220 / GNSE 24220 / GNSE 34220)
REES 29013/39013: The Burden of History: The Nation and Its Lost Paradise
How and why do national identities provoke the deep emotional attachments that they do? In this course we try to understand these emotional attachments by examining the narrative of loss and redemption through which most nations in the Balkans retell their Ottoman past. We begin by considering the mythic temporality of the Romantic national narrative while focusing on specific national literary texts where the national past is retold through the formula of original wholeness, foreign invasion, Passion, and Salvation. We then proceed to unpack the structural role of the different elements of that narrative. With the help of Žižek’s theory of the subject as constituted by trauma, we think about the national fixation on the trauma of loss, and the role of trauma in the formation of national consciousness. Specific theme inquiries involve the figure of the Janissary as self and other, brotherhood and fratricide, and the writing of the national trauma on the individual physical body. Special attention is given to the general aesthetic of victimhood, the casting of the victimized national self as the object of the “other’s perverse desire.” With the help of Freud, Žižek and Kant we consider the transformation of national victimhood into the sublimity of the national self. The main primary texts include Petar Njegoš’ Mountain Wreath (Serbia and Montenegro), Ismail Kadare’s The Castle (Albania), Anton Donchev’s Time of Parting (Bulgaria).
(CMLT 23401 / CMLT 33401 / HIST 24005 / HIST 34005 / NEHC 20573 / NEHC 30573)
REES 43900: A Field on Fire in a World on Fire: Future(s) of REES and the Broader Region
Russia’s escalation of its war on Ukraine to a full-scale invasion in February 2022 amplified the critique of scholars, who have been vocal about imperialist assumptions that had long underpinned Russian, East European and Eurasian studies. It caused a major re-thinking of the field and our role as academics and students, and the relation of knowledge to the lives of communities on the ground and globally. At the same time war and authoritarianism have made research access to the region increasingly difficult. This class will critically examine the state of the field, as well as its potential future(s), even as the future of the region(s) we study and the broader world appear increasingly hopeless. We will devote special attention to land regimes and the environment; feminist and queer epistemologies and critical politics; questions of indigeneity and racialization; inter-regional and global connections, dependencies and resistance; and defining imperial and colonial legacies and avenues for decolonial and anti-imperial approaches in engaging with the region(s). There will also be space for students to define and explore their own interests.
(HIST 43900)
Darya Tsymbalyuk and Faith Hillis
Winter
REES 22011/32011: Nabokov: Three Novels
In this course, three novels by Vladimir Nabokov—Invitation to a Beheading (1935-6), The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941), and Pnin (1957)—are studied in depth with an eye toward their use of language, metanarrative, and the relationship between the author and reader relationship. The first novel is Nabokov's penultimate Russophone work, the second his first Anglophone work, and the third a work written at a time when Nabokov's concern with translation, from language to language, past to present, and cruelty to compassion are at their height.
This course fulfills the GATEWAY requirement for REES majors matriculating in AY 2025-26.
(FNDL 22011)
REES 23310/33310 : Modern Ukraine Through Culture
The 2022 escalation of Russia’s war on Ukraine to a full-scale invasion was a wakeup call which exposed how little had been known about Ukraine globally. While for many in the world Ukraine’s ongoing resistance has been a surprise, for those familiar with Ukraine’s history in the 20th and 21st century, the resistance is rooted in Ukraine’s longer culture of civic mobilization and Ukraine’s complex relationship with Russia. In this course, we revisit major political and cultural events of the 20th and 21st centuries that have shaped today’s Ukraine: the revolutionary period of 1917-1921 to the Chornobyl nuclear catastrophe, to the Orange and Maidan revolutions. One third of the course focuses on Russia’s war on Ukraine starting with the annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbas. While addressing major historical turning points, the course engages literary texts (poems, novels, memoirs), films (feature, short, documentary), and other forms of cultural production (visual artwork, music, multimodal digital projects), testimonies and historical debates. No prior knowledge of Ukraine or knowledge of Ukrainian language is required. The assignments include a choice between a traditional paper or a critical-creative project (video essay, poster, other creative forms).
REES 24010/34010: Ecocide: Reckoning with Environmental Destruction
Ecocide is defined as a crime against the environment, originating from legal debate in the context of the Vietnam War. Taking Vietnam as our starting point, this course engages with a wide range of materials (from novels to poetry to ethnographic studies) and different places (Ukraine, Vanuatu, Iraq, Palestine, and many others) in order to examine the broader context in which the campaign to criminalize environmental destruction emerged. We discuss what forms of environmental justice we can envision and pursue today, and debate possibilities and limitations of legal accountability. The readings are inter- and multidisciplinary, drawing from environmental humanities, anthropology, legal studies, history, and other fields. The assignments include a possibility to develop one’s own research topic, which could take the form of a traditional paper or a critical-creative project (video essay, poster, other creative forms).
REES 25010/35010: Immersive Poetics and Permeable Screens
What does it mean to call a book, a film, or an artwork “immersive”? What do we gain when we lose ourselves in a work of art, and what is it that we lose? Whereas Diderot lauded the feeling of “delicious repose” elicited from pastoral paintings, literary theorist Victor Shklovsky claimed that art exists “to return sensation to life, to make us feel objects, to make a stone feel stony.” Are these reactions opposed or related? What are the dangers of this kind of attraction in the age of mass spectacle or of its use for the ends of an autocratic or fascist ideology? In this seminar, we will examine literary, film and media theories of immersion in international perspective. Case studies in world cinema and literature, from 19th century second-person narratives to recent VR experiences. Students will introduce works from their own area of specialization over the course of the term. Advanced undergraduates may enroll with permission of instructor.
REES 29021/39021: The Shadows of Living Things: The Writings of Mikhail Bulgakov
“What would your good do if evil did not exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared? After all, shadows are cast by things and people. . . . Do you want to strip the earth of all the trees and living things just because of your fantasy of enjoying naked light?” asks the Devil. Mikhail Bulgakov worked on his novel The Master and Margarita throughout most of his writing career, in Stalin’s Moscow. Bulgakov destroyed his manuscript, re-created it from memory, and reworked it feverishly even as his body was failing him in his battle with death. The result is an intense contemplation on the nature of good and evil, on the role of art, and the ethical duty of the artist, but also a dazzling world of magic, witches, and romantic love, and an irresistible seduction into the comedic. Laughter, as shadow and light, as the subversive weapon but also as power’s whip, grounds human relation to both good and evil. Brief excursions to other texts that help us better understand The Master and Margarita. All readings in translation, with an option (pending enrollment) to participate in a separate Russian-language section through the Languages across the Curriculum (LxC) program.
(FNDL 29020)
REES 31500: Teaching Slavic Languages
Teaching Slavic Languages is a course meant to prepare graduate students as effective instructors of Slavic Languages in Academia. REES 31500 will introduce students to fundamental principles of foreign language pedagogy, an array of methodologies and approaches, as well as essential and practical tools for the development of foreign language teaching strategies. Particular emphasis is placed on language structure for more effective instruction in a proficiency-oriented classroom. Since this is very much a “hands-on” course, students are expected to participate in discussions, design relevant pedagogical and professional materials, and lead instruction in preparation for teaching Slavic Languages.
Spring
REES 26072/36072: The Roots of War: Historical and Cultural Causes of Russian Aggression in Ukraine
Since the beginning of Russia's war on Ukraine, Vladimir Putin and his entourage have created false historical constructions that serve as the basis for their aggressive policy. The main question of this course is: to what extent is Putin's retro-policy historically grounded, traditional and natural? An analysis of the rhetoric and historiosophy of the modern Russian elite will reveal the sources they been drawn upon. Is there a connection between Muscovite Russia, the Russian Empire and modern Russian neo-imperialism? What role does the legacy of the USSR play in the political system, state structure and foreign policy of the modern Russian Federation? Where do historical trends, national interests and the new imperial ideology coincide and contradict each other? We will also discuss the modern history of opposition to Putin's authoritarianism and trace the history and cultural significance of democratic institutions in Russia. Finally, we will use the history of Ukrainian statehood and the processes of formation of the Ukrainian nation to shed alternative perspective on recent Russian views of Ukraine.