|
| Undergraduate | Graduate | Courses | Programs | People | Archive | Make a Gift |
Graduate Course Descriptions |
**Please note** that this is a listing of all graduate courses potentially available from the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. To see a list of currently offered courses, please refer to the Current Graduate Courses webpage. Please contact Leonid Livak , the graduate coordinator, for any questions about course offerings. General Slavic H = half course (one term only)
Description of Courses Offered• SLA 1037H - THEATRE AND CINEMA IN EXTREMIS: STAGING TWENTIETH CENTURY AESTHETICS AND POLITICS A study of the effects on aesthetic form of the totalitarian experience in Russia, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. The Russian, Polish and Czech avant-garde, poised between the bankruptcy of traditional aesthetics and the search for new forms in the revolutionary years and the post-Holocaust world. Co-taught course. • SLA 1038H - PERFORMANCE IN THEORY AND PRACTICE • SLA 1039H - KYIV-KIEV-KIJOW: A CITY THROUGH CULTURES AND CENTURIES A cultural history of the Ukrainian capital: Ukrainian, Russian, Polish and Jewish ”versions” of the city; artworks and literary texts that capture the complexity of Kyivan history and culture. • SLA 1040H - METHODS OF TEACHING SLAVIC LANGUAGES This course investigates various language pedagogy approaches and theories discussed in pedagogical literature, and during seminars takes a practical approach to language pedagogy by improving teaching practice and by addressing the issues that arise during TAs’ teaching. This course helps experienced and inexperienced language teachers to develop understanding of learning and teaching a foreign language. All readings, activities, and projects will encourage trainees to think through problems and approaches to teaching. Course assignments and tasks will be modeled on assignments and tasks typical of the foreign language classroom. • SLA1207H - THE IMAGINARY JEW This course examines the genesis and evolution of the image of “the jews,” central to all European cultures, from the theology and psychology of Christian anti-Judaism to their reflection in European arts and folklore, and to the survival of the “jewish” vocabulary of difference in secular forms in post-Christian cultures. Special attention is given to “the jews” of East European imagination and in Russian literature. • SLA 1310H - TWENTIETH-CENTURY THEATRE: MODERNISM, AVANT-GARDE, POSTMODERNISM Theoretical thought and theatre practice of these important East European directors are placed within a broad context of European modernism and avant-garde, with the particular emphasis on the text-stage relationship, mise-en-scene, and within theatre reforms in the 20th century (naturalism and symbolism, the search for the absolute autonomy of theatre performance, the attempts to re-theatricalize the theatre, and to create a ritualistic and mythic holy theatre). • SLA 1421Y - WOMEN IN EAST EUROPEAN FICTION • SLA 1521H - POST-MODERNITY AND THE MYTHOPOETIC LEGACY OF MITTELEUROPA Through the works of Italo Svevo, Robert Musil, Miloš Crnjanski, Jaroslav Hašek, Bruno Schulz, Ivo Andrić, Mircea Eliade, Karl Kraus, Franz Kafka and Miroslav Krleža, the encyclopaedic polygraph and pre-eminent Croat literary figure of the twentieth century, this course focuses on ideology and the role of the writer as alien indigen between exile and asylum. Special attention is given to twentieth-century interbellum fiction, polemical writings and historical essays on cultural history in Central and South-Eastern Europe refracted in works by late- and post-communist writers such as Czesław Miłosz, Josef Škvorecký, Milan Kundera, Danilo Kiš, Dubravka Ugrešić and Aleksandar Hemon. Interviews and films elucidate recent theories of post-orientalism, self-colonialism and interculturality in regions just east of the Trieste-Gdansk transversal. Key fiction: The Return of Philip Latinovicz, The Good Soldier Švejk, On the Edge of Reason, Banquet in Blithuania, The Valley of the Issa, The Man without Qualities, The Forbidden Forest, The Castle, The Confessions of Zeno, Migrations, The Devil's Yard, Gardens, Ashes, Nowhere Man. SLA 1609H - KAREL CAPEK - A MAN WITH MANY POCKETS • SLA 2000Y - READING AND RESEARCH • SLA 2001H - ONE TERM READING AND RESEARCH • SLA 2002Y - READING AND RESEARCH (FOR PH.D CANDIDATES ONLY) • COL 5012Y - READINGS IN CZECH/RUSSIAN LITERARY THEORY Contemporary literary science owes much to the Russian formalists and Prague Linguistic Circle. To trace the imprint of Russian Formalism and Czech Structuralism on current scholarship, this course will introduce general aesthetic concepts of both schools such as aesthetic communication, aesthetic and other functions of language, defamiliarization, foregrounding and the Brechtian V-effekt, literary evolution and concretisation as well as the difference between standard and poetic language. The class will proceed to explore the theoretical treatment of poetry, prose, drama and cinema as presented by the most important scholars such as Roman Jakobson, Yuri Tynianov, Boris Eikhenbaum, Ossip Brik, Viktor Shklovsky, Petr Bogatyrev, Jan Mukařovský, Jindřich Honzl, Jiří Veltruský and Karel Brušák. In the section on theory of prose, the work of Mikhail Bakhtin will also be taken into consideration. When appropriate, text analysis of primary texts will assist in the examination of theoretical writings. Prague as a meeting point of different cultures has attracted many artists. This class explores the myth of Prague as a magic city created in a variety of literary texts. Questions of center and margin, of multiculturalism and nationalism, and of literary cityscapes will be discussed with the help of texts by Jan Neruda, Franz Kafka, M. Cvetaeva, R.M. Rilke G. Meyrink, G. Apollinaire, B. Hrabal, M.Kundera and others. Slavic Linguistics• SLA 1040H - METHODS OF TEACHING SLAVIC LANGUAGESJulia Mikhailova This course investigates various language pedagogy approaches and theories discussed in pedagogical literature, and during seminars takes a practical approach to language pedagogy by improving teaching practice and by addressing the issues that arise during TAs’ teaching. This course helps experienced and inexperienced language teachers to develop understanding of learning and teaching a foreign language. All readings, activities, and projects will encourage trainees to think through problems and approaches to teaching. Course assignments and tasks will be modeled on assignments and tasks typical of the foreign language classroom. • SLA 1101H - HISTORICAL PHONOLOGY, MORPHOLOGY, AND SYNTAX OF THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE This course examines the historical development of Russian phonology and morphology from Common Slavic through Old Russian to the modern era. Selected Old Russian texts will be studied as linguistic documents, including the light they shed on historical syntax. • SLA 1102Y - ADVANCED RUSSIAN LANGUAGE SKILLS • SLA 1103H - COMPARATIVE SOUTH SLAVIC LINGUISTICS Survey of the comparative historical phonology, morphology, syntax, and dialectology of Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian, and Bulgarian. Languages emphasized will depend in part on student background and interest. • SLA 1104H - INTRODUCTION TO OLD CHURCH SLAVONIC Study of the basic grammar of the oldest Slavic religious texts. Reading and translation of selected texts, which are presented in both the old Cyrillic alphabet and modern Latin alphabet transcription (similar to Czech and Polish). • SLA 1105H - RUSSIAN PHONETICS, PHONOLOGY, AND DERIVATIONAL MORPHOLOGY This course examines in a systematic fashion the production and description of Russian sounds (phonetics), the interrelationship of Russian sounds in speech (phonology), the formation of Russian words (derivational morphology). • SLA 1109H - STUDIES IN OLD CHURCH SLAVONIC Reading and linguistic analysis of selected Old Church Slavonic texts (in old Cyrillic and scholarly transcription). • SLA 1110H - COMPARATIVE HISTORICAL SLAVIC LINGUISTICS Study of the phonology, accentuation, and morphology of Proto-Slavic on the basis of modern and medieval Slavic dialects and other Indo-European languages. • SLA 1112H - TENSE, ASPECT, AND MOOD IN SLAVIC In this course we will discuss the interaction of the categories of tense, aspect and mood in various Slavic languages. Students will be expected to know at least two Slavic languages well and have good background preparation in linguistic theory. • SLA 1113H - LANGUAGE STANDARDIZATION AND THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY IN SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE This course covers issues in language standardization, language planning, and other socio-linguistic aspects of the politics of language in southeastern Europe. We will do extensive reading on these linguistic issues focusing on the processes of standardization of South Slavic languages and other languages of the Balkan linguistic area. Recent developments, e.g. the new standardizing Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian, will be viewed in historic context from roughly the mid-nineteenth century to the present. • SLA 1114H - RUSSIAN INFLECTIONAL MORPHOLOGY, STRESS, LEXICON, ASPECT This course examines in a systematic fashion Russian declension and conjugation (inflectional morphology), word stress, the organization of the lexicon, and the formal and semantic properties of verbal aspect. • SLA 1115H - HISTORICAL DIALECTOLOGY, ACCENTUATION, AND VERBAL SEMANTICS OF THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE This course begins with a review of Russian historical phonology, morphology, and the lexicon, as considered primarily through the lens of modern Russian dialects and, secondarily, the comparative evidence of Ukrainian and Belorussian. We then turn to the development of Russian word stress from its Common Slavic origins, including the evidence of accented Old Russian manuscripts. We conclude with a survey of the development of Russian tense, aspect and mood, with reliance upon the evidence of Old Russian and later texts. Russian Literature• SLA1202H - THE GULAG IN RUSSIA LITERATUREStaff The course examines questions of genre, narrative, history and identity in memoirs and fiction on Russian and Soviet labour camps, with readings of texts by Dostoevsky, Figner, Solzhenitsyn, Ginzburg, Shalamov, Tarsis, Siniavsky/Terts and others. • SLA 1203H - THE SELF AND OTHERS IN RUSSIAN PROSE What is a modern Russian individual? This course will follow the debate in Russia from the eighteenth century to the Bolshevik revolution about the relation of the individual and society, with a strong emphasis on definitions of individual psychology and their expression in fictional narratives. We will do close-readings of a small number of literary texts, and supplement these with discussions of excerpts from polemics of the time and other non-fictional material. Possible authors include Karamzin, Pushkin, Gogol, Herzen, Turgenev, Leskov, and Chekhov. The student should check the instructor’s web page for the specific topic of a given year. Readings will be in English with an extra hour every two weeks devoted to the language and style of each text for those who know Russian. • SLA 1204H - CONTEMPORARY RUSSIAN LITERATURE Major writers and literary groupings of the past decade; the literary process in post-Soviet Russia. • SLA1207H - THE IMAGINARY JEW This course examines the genesis and evolution of the image of “the jews,” central to all European cultures, from the theology and psychology of Christian anti-Judaism to their reflection in European arts and folklore, and to the survival of the “jewish” vocabulary of difference in secular forms in post-Christian cultures. Special attention is given to “the jews” of East European imagination and in Russian literature. All readings are in English. • SLA 1210H - STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL RUSSIAN LITERATURE A comprehensive survey of the literature of Kievan Rus' and Muscovy to the Petrine period. All of the principal genres are included in the course, e.g., chronicles, epics, saints’ lives and homiletic works. A brief study of the history of the study of Old Russian Literature is followed by a close textual and stylistic analysis of the major movements of each genre in successive historical periods. • SLA 1211Y - STUDIES IN RUSSIAN DRAMA: 18TH-20TH CENTURIES The development of Russian drama and theatre is examined through a detailed study of the major plays of the Russian repertory, from neo-classical through romantic, realistic, symbolist and futurist, to Soviet and post-Soviet. Among the playwrights studied are Sumarokov, Fonvizin, Griboedov, Pushkin, Gogol, Pisemsky, Ostrovsky, A.K. Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorky, Sologub, Andreev, Mayakovsky, Bulgakov, Vampilov and Arbuzov. The course is also open to students of the Graduate Centre for the Study of Drama and other graduate departments, who may read the plays in English translation. • SLA 1215H - STUDIES IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE AND CRITICISM IN THE 18TH CENTURY This course studies the prose, poetry and dramaturgy of the most prominent Russian literary figures of the eighteenth century: such as N. Karamzin, V. Tretiakovsky, M. Lomonsov, D. Fonvizin, G. Derzhavin, A. Radishchev and I. Krylov. Aspects of literature during the reign of Peter the First, as well as of literature and satirical journalism during the reign of Catherine the Second and of the era of Russian classicism and sentimentalism, will be examined. • SLA 1216H - FROM ENGLISH TO RUSSIAN LITERATURE AND BACK As they entered modernity, Russians first felt overwhelmed by foreign influences, and then took their revenge in the twentieth century, when they influenced others. We will compare seminal English and American texts by such authors as Shakespeare, Sterne, Scott, Byron, Poe or Dickens to Russian prose texts that they influenced, and then we will look at the influence of the Russian texts on subsequent English language ones, mostly in the twentieth century. The student should check the instructor’s web page for the specific topic of a given year. Readings will be in English with an extra hour every two weeks devoted to the language and style of each Russian text for those who know Russian. • SLA 1220H - NINTEENTH CENTURY RUSSIAN THINKERS The course examines the major Russian social and political thinkers and movements in the nineteenth century, and the historical, philosophical and literary contexts in which they were writing. Topics studied may include: the Russian Enlightenment and the growth of rationalism; Decembrism; Chaadaev’s “Philosophical Letter”; Russian Hegelianism; the Slavophiles and Westernisers; Herzen and Russian socialism; the tradition of Russian literary criticism from Belinsky to Pisarev; nihilists, liberals and conservatives in the mid-nineteenth century; populism and anarchism; the foundations of Marxism in Russia. Taught in a combination of lectures and seminars, with weekly readings in English and, for Russian majors, in the original. • SLA 1225H - RUSSIAN LITERATURE AND CRITICISM IN THE 1860s An examination of the literary culture of the 1860s-1870s focusing on the • SLA 1226H - DOSTOEVSKY IN LITERARY THEORY AND CRITICISM • SLA 1228H - THEMES IN RUSSIAN REALISM What is distinctive about Russian realism? The course will examine nineteenth century Russian realist fiction in relation to various theoretical approaches from Erich Auerbach to Roman Jakobson, and will read contemporary works of criticism or thought from Russia and Europe that may have influenced it. Readings will be in English, although students who know Russian or other relevant languages may do their reading in these. • SLA 1231H - RUSSIAN MODERNISM Russian poetry, prose, and literary criticism from the late 1880s until 1940. Topics include: Russia’s fin-de-siècle culture in its European context; the main aesthetic and philosophical trends informing the modernist field and the current theoretical problems in the study of the modernist period; the modernist renewal of Russian poetry, including a survey of the period’s representative figures and texts; experiments with narrative and genre in the prose of the 1910s-30s, in Russia and in emigration; conservative reactions to modernism, from L. Tolstoi to Socialist Realism; the modernist strategies of survival (metanarratives, children’s literature, internal and external exile, literature of the absurd). Readings may include: Chekhov, Solov’ev, Bunin, Z. Gippius, Sologub, Rozanov, Annenskii, Blok, Belyi, Kuzmin, Babel’, Esenin, Zamiatin, Pasternak, Mandel’shtam, Platonov, Zoshchenko, Tsvetaeva, Kharms, A. Tolstoi, Nabokov, Bulgakov, Khodasevich. Taught in Russian. Readings in Russian and English. • SLA 1233H - STUDIES IN MODERN RUSSIAN POETS Among the topics offered are: The Twentieth-Century Poema; The Poetry of the 1920s; and surveys of individual poets, e.g. Blok, Mayakovsky, Tsetaeva. • SLA 1234H - DOSTOEVSKY This course will focus on major aspects of Dostoevsky’s work as significant vantage points on the man and the artist. Films, records, and slides are used to illustrate elements in his writing. The choice of theme or approach is also open to class suggestion. • SLA 1235H - PASTERNAK A survey of Pasternak’s writings in verse and prose, with special reference to the following: Detstvo Lyuvers, Pis’ma iz Tuly, Vozdushnye puti, Okhrannaya gramota, Doktor Zhivago; selected verse from the collections: Poverkh bar’erov, Sestra moya zhizn’, Temy i variatsii, Vtoroe rozhdenie, Kogda razgulyaetsya. A familiarity with some of the Russian poetic movements of the early 20th century and with other Soviet prose writings of the 1920s would be useful. • SLA 1238H - CHEKHOV An exploration of Chekhov’s prose by means of stylistic, structural, and thematic analysis of major stories from all periods of his literacy career. Brief attention may also be given to his non-fictional works, including his letters, to his relationships with other Russian writers and writing, and to Chekhov criticism in Russia and elsewhere. • SLA 1239H - VLADIMIR NABOKOV This course examines Vladimir Nabokov's novels, written both in his “Russian” and “American” periods of creative activity. Special attention is paid to the nature and evolution of Nabokov's aesthetics; the place of his Russian- and English-language novels in the European literary tradition; Nabokov's creative uses of exile to artistic, philosophical and ideological ends; and the implications of the writer's switch from Russian to English as his primary language of artistic expression. Taught in English. • SLA 1240H - L. TOLSTOY Tolstoy’s major fictional and non-fictional writings examined in the context of his spiritual and intellectual development; a survey of the most important Tolstoy criticism. • SLA 1241H - NARRATIVE AND HISTORY Every work of literature originates in a specific time with historically specific readers and goals in mind. Works that retain their importance beyond the period in which they were written may look different to later readers, but precisely for this reason, as much as it is possible it is useful to revisit the original situation of such a work. This course will study the origins of important works of Russian literature in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (whether we still read them for pleasure or not). We will look at issues of genre, readership, politics, ideology, historical figures and events. In addition to Slavists, the course will be of interest to historians and social scientists. Fantastic and grotesque works by the most hilarious, obsessive, and delusional character in Russian literature, who teased, fascinated, and polarized readers. Gogol’s writings are examined with various theoretical approaches. Includes cinematic (Taras Bulba, Viy, Overcoat) and musical (Ribsky-Korsakov’s “Chirstmas Eve,” Shostakovich’s “Nose”) re-creations of Gogol’s works. • SLA 1411H - EXPERIMENTS IN ART IN THE LATE RUSSIAN EMPIRE — EARLY SOVIET UNION Painting, literature, and film from 1890-1930s. New revolutionary paths for the advancement of man and society through art. Symbolism, neoprimitivism, futurism, suprematism, and constructivism. Chekhov, Kandinsky, Bely, Stravinsky, Goncharova, Malevich, Tatlin, Eisenstein, and many others. • SLA 1900H - RUSSIAN POETRY (FOR MA CANDIDATES ONLY) The course, conducted as a seminar with occasional lectures, surveys twelve major Russian poets of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Polish Literature and Culture• SLA 1304H - STAGING GOD, MAN AND HISTORY: POLISH DRAMA AND THEATRE IN CONTEXTTamara Trojanowska Combines theoretical investigations of drama, theatre, and performance in relation to three grand narratives in Polish and European modernity. Investigates intersections of dramatic texts, theatre and performance theory, and theatre productions in the context of modern discourses on metaphysics, identity, and historiosophy. • SLA 1305H - POLISH FICTION OR A DISRUPTED FUNERAL OF THE NOVEL Theoretically informed reading of Polish fiction from 18th to 20th centuries, including narrative strategies, the function of language and literary conventions, various styles and poetics, and the issue of representation. Study engaged in the issues of aesthetics, politics, and epistemology. In addition to the works of fiction (primarily novels, but also of short stories), the reading list includes literary criticism and literary theory. • SLA 1306H - POLISH POETRY: SHAPING THE NATIONAL CANON Major poets of the Polish language, starting with some of the best poets of the European Renaissance (Jan Kochanowski and Mikolaj Sep-Szarzynski), through Polish Baroque and Neoclassicism, and ending with the most unorthodox of European Romanticisms (Mickiewicz, Slowacki, and Norwid). Examining their works in a broader poetic context of other European literatures. • SLA 1308H - CRITICAL PARADIGMS IN POLISH CULTURE Critical study of major literary and cultural paradigms, starting with the revaluations of the often misunderstood Sarmatian culture and the memory of it in the 19th century, moving on to the Romantic paradigm and its (dis)continuations, and ending with the strongest counter-proposals for Polish mentality, identity, and self-identifications (such as the Enlightenment, Positivism, and the Inter-war struggles for modernization). • SLA 1312Y - MODERNISM AND POST-MODERNISM IN POLISH LITERATURE Study of the "five faces of modernity" and of the history of different ideas underlying each concept. Discussions about the results of terminological wars and conflicting understandings are aided by important literary works of Polish modernism and postmodernism, literary theory, philosophy, and concepts developed by sociology and political science. Ukrainian Literature• SLA 1402Y - STUDIES IN UKRAINIAN MODERNISMMaxim Tarnawsky An examination of the modernist movement (1890-1914) in Ukrainian literature. Readings in the authors of the Moloda muza and the Ukrains’ka khata groups as well as other authors. Among the issues examined in the course are questions of genre, gender, nationality, decadence, morality, social issues, and the relation of Ukrainian modernism to other modernist movements in European literatures. • SLA 1403Y - STUDIES IN CONTEMPORARY UKRAINIAN LITERATURE Readings of poetry, prose and criticism from 1960 to the present. Special attention to fiction since 1991. • SLA 1404Y - STUDIES IN UKRAINIAN POETS An in-depth analysis of Ukrainian poetry through the reading of foremost poets. The poets selected for study can change but only the foremost poets in any period will be selected and the aim of the course will be constant: while studying a given corpus of poetic works to determine the most significant features of Ukrainian poetry. • SLA 1405Y - EXPERIMENTS IN UKRAINIAN PROSE An examination of works of fiction, whether novels, short stories, or any other prose genre, that deliberately challenge established conventions, introduce new concepts or techniques, and subvert dogmas of various kinds. The goal is to explore the dynamics of literary history while surveying those works that modify or deviate from its course. The period covered is 1920s with an eye toward student interest and might include; feminist novels, the poem in prose, intellectual fiction, experimental novels from the 1920s, challenges to socialist realism, and the “whimsical novel.” Secondary readings on the problems of Ukrainian literary history will also be examined. • SLA 1406Y - STUDIES IN UKRAINIAN LITERARY CRITICISM An examination of some of the major issues in literary theory and criticism that have influenced or characterized the development of Ukrainian literature. The goal of this course is to study the forces, trends, and ideas (particularly the literary criticism of various periods) that have shaped literature in Ukraine. The course will begin with a survey of the major histories of Ukrainian literature and the historiographical and ideological problems each of them exhibits. The balance of the course will focus on selected topics from Ukrainian literary history. Among them might be any of the following problems or confrontations: Shevchenko vs. Kulish; Nechui vs. Franko; Franko vs. Luckyj; Hrabovych vs. Chyzhevskyi; Khvylovyi vs. Pylypenko; Dontsov vs. communism; Modernism vs. populism; feminism vs. nationalism; Great Literature; Honchar—grafomania or humanism?; the role of the national question in Ukrainian literature; etc. Among the prominent critics to be considered are: Iefremov, Zerov, Vozniak, Ievshan, Hrushevsky, Shevelov, M. Rudnytskyi, Biletskyi, Laslo‑Kutsiuk, Pavlyshyn, Hundorova, and Pavlychko. • SLA 1407H - ASPECTS OF LITERARY TRANSLATION OF UKRAINIAN An introduction to the problems of written translation of literary works from Ukrainian into English (and to a lesser extent, English to Ukrainian): evaluation and comparison of existing translations, practical exercises; treatment of common difficulties in translating, various literary genres and styles, dialectal, social, generational and other sub-varieties of language, as well as idiomatic and figurative language. • SLA 1408H - TARAS SHEVCHENKO A detailed examination of Taras Shevchenko as a poet, as a painter, as a person, and as a prophet of the Ukrainian nation. The course covers all of Shevchenko's written works: his poetry, prose, letters, diary, and drama. It also examines some of his artwork. The significance of Shevchenko in Ukrainian literature, history and society is analyzed by examining his reception from the first reviews of his works to the present time. Special attention is given to the variety of approaches to Shevckenko’s works, including social, political, patriotic, psychological, religious, and mythological. A general survey of Ukrainian literature written outside Ukraine. The writing examined in the course includes 3 categories: 1. Literary works by writers who live(d) outside Ukraine. 2. Literary works focused on exile or diaspora topics and written by writers who spent at least part of their lives outside Ukraine. 3. Literary works in languages other than Ukrainian (primarily English) on the subject of Ukrainians in the diaspora. The writers considered will include Emma Andievska, Ievhen Malaniuk, Todos Osmachka, Ulas Samchuk, Ihor Kostetskyi and others. Croatian and Serbian Literatures• SLA 1507H - MODERN CROATIAN BARDS IN PERFORMANCEStaff The Croatian Moderna, Expressionism and other Avant-Garde and contemporary movements in the context of Croatian cultural history and the development of national consciousness as seen in Social and Partisan Poetics, Dialectal Verse, Post-war Existentialism, the Second Moderna, Jeans poetry, Post-Modern, Minimalist and Homeland War verse, the Croatian Haiku Movement, and Post-PoMo popular folk poetry. Special emphasis on interpretation through analysis of declaimed and sung performance (estradna poezija). Lyrics of Preradović, Kranjčević, Nazor, Begović, Domjanić, Matoš, Kamov, Šimić, Ujević, Krleža, Tadijanović, Franičević, Parun, Mihalić, Slamnig and others performed by Arsen Dedić, Rade Šerbedžija, Ivica Jusić and Lidija Bajuk. Coverage of the Croatian Mediterranean-Dinaric-Panonnian "Bardic Sphere" through examination of new Post-Colonial, Post-Modern and Post-Communist interdisciplinary criticism. • SLA 1517H - MODERN SERBIAN BARDS: THE ORPHIC TRADITION Modern Serbian poetry from the late 1900s to the present. Focus on the "Golden Age" of Parnassianism and Symbolism, Expressionist "Sumatraism", the efflorescence of Belgrade as Europe's "Second Capital of Surrealism", Yugo-Dada, Zenithism, the Kosovo legacy in traditional and ironic mythopoesis, Prosodic representation of the Holocaust, contemporary Serbian Signalism, the Humorist Avant-Garde, Concrete and Verbo-Voco-Visual poetry. Master video and audio performances of classic and popular verse by Šantić, Dučić, Rakić, Bojić, Petković Dis, Vinaver, Crnjanski, Ve Poljanski, Dedinac, Nastasijević, Maksimović, Popa, Lalić, Pavlović, Bećković and others interpreted by Raičković, Balašević and Berić (Ekstra Nena). Analysis of new directions in transcendental, ecumenical and ecclesiastical verse. • SLA 1537H - POLITICAL DRAMA FROM DUBROVNIK TO THE DANUBE Model plays ranging from the Renaissance in Dalmatia, home of the first communal theatre in modern Europe, to the twenty-first century studied in reference to the contemporary national, ethnic and ideological background of South East and Central Europe. Focus on theatre aesthetics and performance strategies in light of official and unofficial censorship in former Yugoslavia and its successor nations. Themes of utopianism, terrorism and repression. Readings little known in the West, including classic plays by Marin Držić, Ragusan contemporary of Machiavelli and forerunner of Shakespeare, Jovan Sterija Popović, the Danubian Moliere, Ivo Vojnović, South Slav exponent of Chekhov and Ibsen, Miroslav Krleža, revisor of Strindberg and anticipator of Brecht and Popular Theatre, and others. Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian plays and secondary literature in English translation with original language texts provided. Lectures illustrated through the use of films of productions and scenes from theatrical performances, with visiting guest directors. • SLA 1547H - SOUTH SLAVIC FOLKLORE Historical, ethnological and stylistic study of lore—beliefs, traditions, customs—and symbolic design of the South Slavs with focus on their role in the development of tribal and national cultures. Ethnography of cultural interaction, sharing and exclusion among Continental (Panonnian-Danubian-Moravan-Vardaran), Dinaric (Slovenian, Bosnian, Montenegin Alps) and Mediterranean (Adriatic, Aegean) Balkan societies. Genres covered include folk curses, toasts, riddles, proverbs, incantations, exorcisms, fables, fairy tales, legends, myths, anecdotes, stories, lamentations, lullabies, lyric verses, ballads, and heroic songs. Special attention to the Homeric Question through application of oral epic theory to texts from the Balkan Christian, Slavic Moslem and pagan-Greek traditions. Czech and Slovak Literatures• SLA 1600Y - INTRODUCTION TO CZECH AND SLOVAK LITERATURES SLA 1602Y - CZECH STYLE AND SYNTAX • SLA 1603H - LIFTING THE IRON CURTAIN: CZECH CULTURE OF THE SIXTIES IN CONTEXT This class will explore the context in which these experiments in literature, cinema, theatre, and contemporary art took place and the effects they still have. Original works will be compared with a number of dramatizations and film adaptations. • SLA 1604Y - HISTORY OF CZECH VERBAL ART FROM THE EARLY STAGES TO BAROQUE Original and translated Czech literary works, liturgical texts, travelogues, and other documents illustrate a number of stages in Czech literary history that encompasses thousand years. Students will be introduced to different styles, genres, and devices of various epochs. • SLA 1605H - OF ROBOTS, CLOWNS AND POETS: MODERN CZECH DRAMA AND THEATRE Theatre has long played a key role in Czech culture and politics. The facts that the so-called Velvet Revolution of November 1989 took place in theatre and culminated with the election of the playwright Václav Havel as a president of Czechoslovakia confirmed the function of Czech theatre as a public forum. Modern Czech theatre, however, has also served as a 'laboratory' of dramatic and staging experiments, conceptualized by a number of theorists. In fact, as Keir Elam shows the scholars of the so-called Prague School initiated modern semiotics of theatre and drama. The genre of short story is represented in the work of a number of Czech writers. This class focuses on different presentations of public places and private spaces in various texts of Czech writers from the 19th and 20th centuries such as Němcová, Zeyer, Pekárková, Kratochvil, Topol, Linhartová, Kantůrková, Součková, Čep, Weiner. SLA 1608H - ON THE WAVE OF THE AVANT-GARDE In 1920 artists of diverse disciplines founded the group Devětsil (Nine Powers), which COL 5039H - OF LAUGHTER AND FORGETTING IN MILAN KUNDERA Laughter and forgetting are the recurrent themes in both Kundera's fictional and essayistic work. When examining the variations of this topic this class will discuss Kundera's prosaic, dramatic, and essayistic texts of his Czech period and attempt to place Kundera within the European context of the 'art of fiction'. COL 5062H - PRAGUE SCHOOL OF SEMIOTICS, DRAMA, THEATRE AND CINEMA IN CONTEMPORARY CONTEXT Current semiotic theories of drama, theatre, and cinema have been informed by the theoretical concepts developed since the 1920s first by Russian Formalists and later by the Prague Structuralists of the so-called Prague school who often conceptualized concurrent artistic experiments and developed a language used by both practitioners and theorists (Keir Elam, 2002). This aspect will serve as a point of departure for comparison of the Prague School semiotics with the modes in which contemporary theorists like Keir Elam, Patrice Pavis, and David Bordwell analyze, and theorize modern artistic trends in drama, theatre, and cinema. |
|
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures 121 St. Joseph Street, Alumni Hall (AH), Rm. 429 ~ Toronto, Ontario ~ M5S 1J4 tel: 416-926-2075 ~ fax: 416-926-2076 ~ email: slavic@chass.utoronto.ca |