2020-2021

This course will examine attempts to build harmonious sustainable communities in the U.S., U.S.S.R., and around the world. Our content will be historical, philosophical and literary, and will include communal charters, purpose statements, and architectural plans— alongside testimonies to success and memoirs of failure. We will identify patterns and principles that differentiate communal societies from those surrounding them, and consider the relationship of these to the systematic failures and successes of experiments in alternative living. We will also consider the personalities involved: of the founders, stalwart communards, wandering seekers, and troublemakers. We will ask the hard questions that these communities have continually faced, considering how shared space transforms shared beliefs and aspirations, why the latter have been so difficult to sustain, and how the commune could be made to work.

Chicago claims to have the largest Polish and Polish-American population in the US and yet the city’s distinctly Polish neighborhoods are now only history as their population has dispersed or moved to the suburbs. This course explores the diminishing presence of Poles against the lasting input of the material culture which they introduced to the urban spaces of Chicago. The course is framed by the fundamentals of thing discourse and employs the mediums of sculpture, fashion, photography, architecture and topography of the Polish community in Chicago through several field trips. The course’s main goal is to map the evolution of the former Polish neighborhoods which often concluded with the erasure of their distinct ethno-space. In order to grasp the status of such changes, students take several field trips to the former Polish neighborhoods and visit their existing architectural landmarks and cultural institutions.

Towards the end of the course, students conduct several interviews with Polish Chicagoans from the postwar and Solidarity immigrations. The course concludes with a capstone project for which students will make a virtual collection of artifacts designed as a curio cabinet filled with objects they found, created, and purchased during their research and field trips.

This course includes instruction in grammar, writing, and translation, as well as watching selected Polish movies. Selected readings are drawn from the course textbook, and students also read Polish short stories and press articles. In addition, the independent reading of students is emphasized and reinforced by class discussions. Work is adjusted to each student's level of preparation.

This course includes instruction in grammar, writing, and translation, as well as watching selected Polish movies. Selected readings are drawn from the course textbook, and students also read Polish short stories and press articles. In addition, the independent reading of students is emphasized and reinforced by class discussions. Work is adjusted to each student’s level of preparation. Drill sessions to be arranged.

This literary and linguistic approach to Russian allows students to learn the language by engaging classic Russian poetic texts (e.g., Pushkin’s The Bronze Horseman), as well as excerpts from Eugene Onegin and selections from Pushkin’s shorter poems and prose works. Although the focus is on reading Russian, all four major communicative skills (i.e., reading, writing, listening comprehension, speaking) are stressed, preparing students for the College Language Competency Exam and for continued study of Russian in second-year courses. Conversation practice is held twice a week.

This course continues RUSS 10103-10203-10303; it includes review and amplification of grammar, practice in reading, elementary composition, and speaking and comprehension. Systematic study of word formation and other strategics are taught to help free students from excessive dependence on the dictionary and develop confidence in reading rather than translating. Readings are selected to help provide historical and cultural background. Conversation practices is held twice a week.

This course introduces modern Russian to students who would like to speak Russian or to use the language for reading and research. All five major communicative skills (i.e., reading, writing, listening, comprehension, and speaking) are stressed. Students are also introduced to Russian culture through readings, videos, and class discussions. This yearlong course prepares students for the College Language Competency Exam, for continued study of Russian in second-year courses, and for study or travel abroad in Russian-speaking countries. Conversation practice is held twice a week.

This is a three-quarter sequence designed for fourth- and fifth-year students of Russian. It is also suitable for native speakers of Russian. This sequence covers various aspects of advanced Russian stylistics and discourse grammar in context. This sequence emphasizes the four communicative skills of listening, reading, speaking, and writing in a culturally authentic context. It builds transcultural competence by expanding students' knowledge of the language, culture, history, and daily lives of the Russian-speaking people. Vocabulary building is strongly emphasized. We add to the existing skills and develop our abilities to analyze increasingly complex texts for their meaning: to identify various styles and registers of the Russian language and to provide their neutral equivalents in standard Russian. We also work on developing our abilities to paraphrase, narrate, describe, support opinions, hypothesize, discuss abstract topics, and handle linguistically unfamiliar situations (in spoken and written format).

This course, which is intended for third-year students of Russian, covers various aspects of Russian grammar in context and emphasizes the four communicative skills (i.e., reading, writing, listening comprehension, speaking) in a culturally authentic context. Excerpts from popular Soviet/Russian films and clips from Russian television news reports are shown and discussed in class. Classes conducted in Russian; some aspects of grammar explained in English. Drill practice is held twice a week.

Advanced BCS courses encompass both the 3rd and 4th years of language study, with the focus changed from language structure and grammar to issues in interdisciplinary content. The courses are not in sequence. This course addresses the theme of Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav identity through discussion and interpretation based on selected films, documentaries, images, and related texts—historical and literary, popular press, advertisements, screenplays, and literature e on film. Emphasis is on interpersonal communication as well as the interpretation and production of language in written and oral forms. The course engages in systematic grammar review, along with introduction of some new linguistic topics, with constant practice in writing and vocabulary enrichment. The syllabus includes the screening of six films, each from a different director, region, and period, starting with Cinema Komunisto (2012), a documentary by Mila Turajlic. This film will be crucial for understanding how Yugoslav cinema was born and how, in its origins, it belongs to what a later cinephile, Fredric Jameson, has called a “geopolitical aesthetic.” We shall investigate the complex relationship between aesthetics and ideology in the Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav cinema, and pay close attention to aesthetic conceptions and concrete formal properties, and more importantly, to language, narrative logic, and style.