Advanced Literature & Criticism: Russian Literature

In this year-long, advanced-level class, students will explore different critical approaches to canonical literature, considering a breadth of literary theory. This course will engage students in reading peer-reviewed scholarship about literary texts. Over the course of the year, students will be challenged to situate their original close-readings of literature in relation to at least one scholar or critic, showing how their theses build on, develop, or constructively critique past scholarship. The goal of the course is to guide students through the basics of research in the field of literary studies and to prepare them for college-level English. This course focuses on the interrelationship of history, literature, and philosophy in Russian literature. During the fall semester, students will read novels, stories, and works of criticism from the 19th century, exploring the ways in which these works enter into argument with each other about the potential for personal freedom, the meaning of suffering, and the power (or the limits) of the word. The spring semester will focus on the 20th and 21st centuries, and the ways in which revolution, oppression, and loss were imagined both in literature and film.