RUSSL 3386 - Life, Love, and Death in Twentieth-Century Russian Prose

(HA-AS)

Fall. 4 credits. Student option grading.

Enrollment limited to: 15 students. This course may be counted toward the Russian Minor.

G. Shapiro.

For over a century now, the Soviet/Russian regime has been one of the foremost adversaries of the American democracy. In order to interact with the country successfully, it is imperative to become familiar with it as a sociopolitical and cultural entity. To this end, this course provides a vital lens through which one may look at Russia’s modern history and comprehend its contemporary mentality. We shall discuss the works by classics of twentieth-century Russian prose, such as Chekhov, Bunin, Bulgakov, Nabokov, Solzhenitsyn, Shalamov, and Voinovich. In translation.