Middlebury Russian School Grad. Program

Sun Mar 18 22:54:18 UTC 2001

Dear Colleagues:

Here is a listing of the courses we will be offering in the graduate
program of the Russian School of Middlebury College in summer 2001.
The dates of the program are June 25 through August 11, 2001.
Financial aid is available.  One unit of credit is the equivalent of
3 credits in a semester program.

The courses on Russian political life and the Russian economy will be
taught in the afternoon so that students attending 3rd and 4th year
Russian classes who want to audit the politics and economics courses
will be able to do so.

Please encourage your students to consider Middlebury this summer.

For more information, see our web page at:

http://www.middlebury.edu/~ls/Russian

or contact Ben Rifkin, director of the Russian School at
brifkin at facstaff.wisc.edu.

Middlebury College Russian School Graduate (6-Week) Program:  11 Courses

AKSENOVA, GALINA
Russian Drama on the Silver Screen
This course is devoted to Russian drama, its interpretation, and its
adaptation for Russian cinema. It will cover major Russian 19th and
20th century playwrights such as Gogol, Ostrovsky, Chekhov, Gorky,
Bulgakov, and Vampilov. Students will read plays, view films based on
these plays, and write short papers. (1 Unit)

BORISOV, NIKOLAI
Contemporary Russian Political Life
This course explores the unique political traditions of the country
in their economic and cultural context.   The primary focus will be
on significant and controversial political problems.  Students will
learn about the difficulties facing Russia on its path to democracy
and civil society, and, looking toward the future, will read
objective descriptions of leading Russian political figures of
various directions and the most likely scenarios for Russia's future
political development.  Topics will include:  mass communications,
the military, the church, youth, the development of new systems of
values, the center and the periphery, Chechnya, Russia as a leader of
the CIS, Russian elections 1995-2000 and more.  The course will
consist of lectures and discussions.  Students' grades will be based
on written tests, papers and presentations.(1 Unit)

The Contemporary Russian Economy
This course provides an analysis of the profound changes happening in
Russian in the last 10 years.  The rapid development of private
property and a market economy are at the root of these changes.  The
course will show the effect of economic reforms on the state, the
society, and the individual.  In the class we will analyze the
situation of major sectors of the Russian economy:  industry, the
financial-credit sphere, the fuel/energy sector, and agriculture.  We
will discuss the factors slowing down Russia's economic growth.  The
course will consist of lectures and discussions; students' grades
will be based on written tests and papers. (1 Unit)

ODINTSOVA, IRINA
Practical Phonetics
Students in this course will review the fundamentals of the sound
system of Russian, focusing on areas of special difficulty for
learners whose native language is English.
Among the topics of special concern:  hard and soft consonants,
sibilants, voiced and voiceless consonants, intonation and rhythmics
in the context of simple, complex and compound sentences. Students
will use a variety of written texts to practice pronunciation in
class and in taped exercises for homework assignments.  The grade for
the course will be based on daily homework (preparation for class),
written transcriptions, and 3 oral
examinations.  (1 Unit)

Advanced Conversation Practicum
Students in this class will focus on expanding their lexicon and
their syntactical repertoire as they approach interesting and,
sometimes, controversial topics concerning contemporary Russian
society and culture.  Class discussions will also focus on the films
shown in the Contemporary Russian Film Festival, on viewings of daily
broadcast news (by satellite on NTV) and on the lectures presented by
guests of the Russian School, as assigned.  The course will be
predicated on helping students achieve the advanced or superior
levels of oral proficiency according to the ACTFL Oral Proficiency
Guidelines.  The grade for the course will be based on daily homework
(preparation for class), vocabulary quizzes, and 3 oral examinations.
(1 Unit)

SHEVELENKO, IRINA
Pasternak:  Poetry and Short Prose Fiction
This course will focus on Pasternak's lyric poetry from the 1910s
through the Zhivago cycle, with special attention given to his two
most prominent poetry collections: My Sister -- Life and Themes and
Variations. General discussion of various artistic currents in
Russian Modernism will serve as a backdrop for our approach to
Pasternak. The students will develop and polish their skills of close
reading and their ability to understand philosophical content of
poetic works. Pasternak's short prose fiction (most attention will be
given to The Childhood of Luvers) will be discussed in the context of
his development as an artist and in the context of the tendencies in
Russian prose of the time. Readings will also include excerpts from
Pasternak's non-fictional works and letters that are relevant for the
understanding of his creative ideology. Requirements include two
presentations and a final paper. (1 Unit)

Issues in the History of Russian Painting
This course begins with the discussion of icon-painting in the
context of medieval ecclesiastic culture. We then proceed to the
developments in Russian painting in the 18th-19th centuries, with the
emphasis on the following topics: art of the portrait; imagining
national history in painting; Academic and non-Academic painting;
"social comment" in painting. The second half of the course will be
devoted to various Modernist and Avant-Garde currents in the later
19th and 20th centuries. We will discuss works by Serov, Vrubel,
Benois, Bakst, Somov, Kustodiev, Petrov-Vodkin, Larionov, Goncharova,
Chagal, Malevich, Filonov, et al. Requirements include a midterm
take-home examination and a final in-class examination. (1 Unit)

VINITSKY, ILYA
Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment
This course will deal with the analysis of the ideological and
poetical structure of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. Students
will also read excerpts of some "companion" works by the author and
his contemporaries providing an interpretative context for the novel:
Notes from Underground," excerpts from Dostoevsky's notebooks and
diaries, Chernyshevsky's What Is to Be Done?, and the like. The
reading will also include excerpts of several critical works
concerning the ideology and poetics of Dostoevsky's novel by such
major Russian critics as V. Ivanov, Mochulsky, Grossman, Dolinin, and
Bakhtin. Class will be conducted in the form of lecture and
discussion, including some student presentations. Reading assignments
will normally consist of 30 pages of Dostoevsky's prose daily and 10
pages of critical works twice a week. Written assignments will
include one-page essays once a week, a longer paper (5-7 pp.) in the
middle of the course and a final exam. (1 Unit)

Lermontov and Russian Romanticism
This course will be devoted to close reading of works by a prominent
Russian Romantic writer (a "Russian Byron") Mikhail Lermontov.  These
will include his major novel, Hero of Our Time, his narrative poems
"The Demon," "Mtsyri" ("The Novice"), his drama Masquerade, and his
lyric poems, such as "The Sail," "Borodino," "The Prayer," among
others. We will endeavor to trace and understand Lermontov's literary
and ideological development in the broader context of Russian
Romanticism. Class will include lectures, discussions, and some
student presentations. Students will normally have to read 20 pages
of Lermontov's prose or 10 pages of his poetry daily, and write brief
assignments of one page in length twice a week, except in week 4,
when they will have a test.  Students will write a final paper 5-7
pages in length.  (1 Unit)

ZHURAVLYOVA, NELLY
Advanced Language Practicum
This course will focus on (1) the development of grammatically
correct, expressive language, (2) the improvement of speech
standards, and (3) overcoming specific difficulties encountered by
advanced students, especially proper usage and building a sentence
(word order, verbal aspects, verbs of motion, etc.). Exercises and
assignments will be based on the lexico-grammatical and stylistic
analysis of literary texts. (1 Unit)

Advanced Composition
This course will focus on helping students improve their command of
written Russian.  Students will read short prose texts in a variety
of genres and analyze them for style before using them as models for
their own expository prose.  In class discussion we will focus on
stylistic issues in the prose written by Russian authors and in the
students' own prose.  Students will write short compositions
two-three times a week, will collaborate with one another to edit
their work, and will present finished papers publicly, including in
the context of our school newspaper, website, and radio station
programming. Grades will be based on class participation and
compositions written throughout the 6-week program. (1 Unit)

--
____________________________
Benjamin Rifkin

Associate Prof., Slavic Dept., UW-Madison
1432 Van Hise Hall, 1220 Linden Dr.
Madison, WI  53706
voice: 608/262-1623; fax: 608/265-2814
http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/slavic/rifkin/

Director of the Russian School
Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT  05753
voice:  802/443-5533; fax: 802/443-5394
http://www.middlebury.edu/~ls/Russian/

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