Slavic Studies

This course develops knowledge of Czech at the intermediate level. It provides linguistic tools to enable successful communication in many situations and to facilitate better understanding of the Czech cultural and social context. By completing this course, students acquire the following knowledge and language skills: listening: students can follow basic news, general conversation, and understand announcements; reading: students can read and understand texts on familiar topics and simple news items; speaking: students can hold conversation on known topics, can answer questions about themselves, and can ask for information; writing: students can write emails and short texts on familiar topics, including PowerPoint presentations; and vocabulary: students acquire broader and more specialized vocabulary related to specific situations and topics. This course is designed for students who meet the following requirements: 1) are able to read and comprehend a simple newspaper or magazine article; 2) are able to communicate about everyday topics; 3) are able to write one page essay on familiar topics (where they live, why they want to study the Czech language, etc.); and 4) have acquired basic vocabulary and understand fundamental principles of Czech grammar (conjugation, declension, syntax, etc.).

This is a beginning-level course that provides students with the basic skills needed to communicate on a daily basis, including grammar, conversation, listening, writing, and reading comprehension. The course is designed to develop practical knowledge of the Czech language, allowing for function in everyday situations and facilitating a degree of integration into Czech culture and society. The course focuses on correct pronunciation and the acquisition of pertinent vocabulary and phraseology. Grammatical topics are introduced and employed as tools allowing for the use of Czech in simple conversational situations. The course also includes topics related to the Czech culture as a basic introduction to Czech society and customs. This course is intended for students who do not intend to continue their study of Czech and desire an introduction to the fundamentals of Czech grammar, syntax, and vocabulary.

This course examines the role of ethnic and religious identity in group prejudice in a Central European context, along with its geopolitical, cultural, ideological, and ethical implications. The course explores the function of communication in large groups and in mass movements, and the opportunities it provides for social research. A comparison of the Anglo-American and Continental European traditions of social research provide insight into complementarities of the two approaches and potential richness for new methodological approaches in the field of communication research. Students explore the historical circumstances in which particular social research scholarship was developed in order to provide a more realistic understanding of the scientific process. The course also discusses the mutual influence of society and social research and the benefits and dangers of this dynamic for democracy. Students identify research problems and build adequate research methodologies. The course reviews topics including the role of ethnicity and religious affiliation in a Central European context, how stereotypes may lead to group prejudice, prejudiced group attitudes as they appear in media and other forms of public discourse, the importance of social research for policy planning, interpreting publicly disseminated messages, and comparing and analyzing approaches to social research from an historical perspective.

This course introduces the range of historical, political, and cultural frameworks that define the region of the Balkans. Guided by critical geopolitics and critical heritage studies, it maps the turning points and minor stories that make this region. The mapping exercise provides an opportunity to use multi-scalar and multi-temporal approaches and explore territories, practices, events, and communities from the mid-19th century to contemporary initiatives such as the Open Balkans. The course investigates the discrepancies between dynamics around the making of a region, and the spatial entanglements in the culturally and historically charged urban heritage sites. Through these places, it examines spatial categories, borders as part of everyday life, notions of politics of the past, heritage as a tool of geopolitics, and the democratic potential of heritage.

The course focuses on the construction of Czech national identity during the 19th and 20th century. Although the Czech national awakening started first with the beginning of the 19th century, it used the symbols and references through all the historical eras of Czech lands starting with the early medieval times. The course follows the roots of Czech national consciousness from the first ruling dynasty, through the gothic, renaissance, baroque times until the foundation of Czechoslovakia and its history in the 20th century. Special attention is dedicated to the symbols and symbolical places, which were used during the creation of Czech national revival as patterns of Czech national identity (e.g. Slavín cemetery, National Museum, National Theatre, Municipal house, the monument of Battle of White Mountain, National Memorial on the Vítkov Hill). By visiting these symbolical places the students are able to see, what kind of national symbols were used and in which way. The course is divided into two parts: the first part is theoretical, in the in order to outline the topic and background of the lecture. The second part includes field trips to one of the museums/memorials, where the different problematics are discussed more precisely.

This course introduces Soviet and post-Soviet politics and external policies, with a special emphasis on domestic developments in Russia and Ukraine, and the impact on Moscow's foreign behavior. The key paradigm is the close interaction between internal and external factors. The course addresses the building and unbuilding of an empire: from the Tsarist empire to the USSR; the fall of the USSR to the consolidation of new independent republics in Europe; Gorbachev and Yeltsin's reforms to Putin's authoritarianism; and partnership to confrontation with Western countries. Topics also include Russia's wars: Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, and Ukraine; the major issues of democracy versus autocracy; Russian post-Soviet identity; European security; economic challenges; Russia-West relations; and the future of Ukraine and Russia.