Slavic Studies

The word ‘empire’ makes one think of the great European naval empires: Portuguese, Dutch, and English. And yet, the third largest empire in history—surpassed only by the Mongol and British Empires—is Russia. Moreover, Russia has sustained its peak territorial extent much longer than any other empire, having been the largest polity on earth for the last 400 years. How should we understand the Russian empire? And how does it help us get a better grasp on recent political events? Much commentary has tried to describe Russian with the classic categories of Western political thought: autocracy, despotism, dictatorship, nationalism, fascism. Others have followed Winston Churchill in declaring Russia to be incomprehensible: ‘a mystery wrapped in an enigma’. This course teaches to think about Russia in a different way, and to recognize it as a complex socio-cultural entity that needs to be understood on its own terms. It shows that the most famous events in Russian history—whether the Revolution of 1917, or the full-scale invasion of Ukraine—can only be properly evaluated within the long-term context of Russian imperial history and identity-formation and teaches students to think of a Russia that faces not only ‘the West’, but also a vast frontier stretching from the Caucasus mountains to the Korean peninsula. The course also places Russian history in comparative perspective, using tools and methods well-known to scholars of International Relations. The course examines whether Russian autocracy is a unique cultural phenomenon, or whether it bears similarities to other political regimes throughout history. Most importantly, it considers the constant interaction between culture and politics. How did shifting conceptions of gender shape the Russian imperial project? How was the Empire’s extraordinary diversity in terms of religious belief, mother tongue, ethnicity or lifestyle studied, interpreted, codified in law, and leveraged for political gains or reinforcing power hierarchies? How has political authority been conceptualized by Russians and their subjects, not just in high politics and formal treatises, but also in art, literature, and other forms of cultural expression? At the end of this course, understand the long-term origins of the Russian Empire, and be able to debate how these origins shape Russian culture and society today.

The course studies two very important changes on the political map of Eastern Europe focusing on the period from the fall of Communism in 1989 to 2007 (the independence of Kosovo): the break-ups of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. It explores the reasons behind the brutal Yugoslav wars and the "velvet divorce" of Czechoslovakia, and offers an insight into films, art happenings, images, and texts created during the period in question. Contextualized within these two very different and yet comparable cases of political demise, these cultural products are examined as complex responses to the events, but also as strategies (aesthetic, political and psychological) to deal with the crisis and the imminent transformations. The course explores these cultural outputs as effective tools in voicing and shaping emerging identities and mapping out the real and symbolic geographies of the region.

This course introduces students to Slovene literature and the culture and history of the Slovenes since 1800. It is focused on one of Europe’s smallest nations, but it asks big questions: How does a national tradition take shape by combining and integrating various cultural and linguistic influences? Does national unity depend on regional diversity? Can language be the sole basis of national identity? The course explores such questions through canonical works of Slovene poetry, prose, drama, visual art, film and architecture and address a number of key themes, including: romanticism and the national awakening; folk culture and Slovenian regions; search for a Slovene modernism; the birth of Yugoslavia; the Second World War and the partisan memory; the end of Yugoslavia and Yugostalgia; gender and feminism; Slovenia and contemporary Europe.

This course focuses on the evolutions of domestic politics and foreign policy in Russia since the collapse of the USSR. After a brief introduction to the nature of the Soviet political system, the course is divided into three parts. The first part deals with the period of political transition following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the genesis of the political system in contemporary Russia. Contrary to hopes of liberalization, Russian society was plunged into a financial, economic, political and social crisis, which favored a rapid return to authoritarianism. The second part looks at the genesis of Putinism and how the ruling elite came to dominate society. Finally, the third part focuses on post-Soviet Russia's foreign policy and the implementation of its ambitions on the international stage.

This course provides an introduction to the theory and practice of Russian-to-English translation. It introduces key theoretical approaches to interlinguistic translation, with a particular focus on contemporary theories; it identifies key linguistic and cultural issues that are particularly relevant for translation from Russian into English; and it helps students to practice and develop both their own translation skills and their skills at critical analysis and assessment of approaches to translation, multiple translations of individual texts, and specific translation choices. Weekly lectures cover issues of theory and genre; seminars provide the opportunity to discuss these issues in detail and to compare different translations of individual works; and translation practicums provide the opportunity to discuss weekly translation portfolio assignments and engage in further translation work (e.g., of unseen text excerpts similar to the translation portfolio assignments).