Russian Literature
History of Mathematics and Science (AD 1500-2000)
1. The Time of the Dilletantes: from Cardano and Brahe to Descartes and Fermat
2. The Time of the Tenacious: Kepler, Wallis and Huygens
3. The Time of the Omnipotents: from Newton to Euler
4. The Time of the Prophets: from Gauss to Klein
5. The Time of the Rigorous: from Cauchy to Cantor
6. Ordnung and Elan: Riemann, Hilbert and Poincare
7. The Time of Troubles: from Russel to Goedel and Cohen
8. Embarras de Richesse: from Whitney to Grothendieck
9. Some Mathematical Interpretations of the History of Science
History of Russia
1. The Birth of the Russian State: Bysance and Kiev
2. The first Russian Democracy: Novgorod and her partners
3. The first Russian Kingdom: Vladimir and the other city-states
4. A painful Dialogue: Russia and the Golden Horde
5. The Rise of the Moscow Empire
6. A new painful Dialogue: Russia and Europe 1600-1720
7. The Eurasian Empire of Russia: 1720-1917
8. The birth of Russian Science: from Lomonosov to Kolmogorov and Kapitsa
9. Interpretations of Russian History: from Ivan the Terrible to Stalin and Gumilev
Russian Language I
This is an elementary Russian course intended for adult beginners in
Russian.
The course aims at helping the student to acquire a working knowledge of
Russian so that he/she could:
- communicate with Russians on topics covered by the course (Greetings,
Acquaintance, Family, Shopping, etc.);
- express his/her thoughts in Russian on the basis of the grammar and
vocabulary studied;
- understand orally, read and retell simple texts, conveying in Russian
his/her attitude towards what he/she has read or heard;
- read with a dictionary and translate more difficult texts;
- prepare oral or written reports on any given topic.
Thus the course gives the student a thorough knowledge of the fundamentals
of Russian. On completing it the student, if desires, will be able to
continue either guided or unguided deeper study of the language.
The choice of the material and its arrangements have been determined by
the principal goal of the course -- giving the student practical skills in
Russian.
Russian Language II
This is an advanced course for those students who have
sufficient fluency in speaking Russian but have some
difficulties in writing (spelling and punctuation),
misusage of words, limited vocabulary. The main purpose is to
develop all four language skills (speaking, writing, reading and
understanding of oral speach) systematically.
The course includes systematic skills development work:
--- grammar exercises;
--- writing of essays;
--- reading in Russian classics(short stories and prosaic
--- extracts of 19-20 centuries, poetry of 20 century);
--- visiting theaters and cinemas to get acquintance with
--- classical Russian plays and movies;
--- conversations and discussions on different topics (topics are chosen
--- individually, depending on students interests).
We use a three-pronged approach to vocabulary expansion consisting of
learning strategies, vocabulary systems, and lexical sets.
Thematically this course is based on socio-cultural material and
includes information on Russian history and geography. In addition
to a purely pragmatic purpose, the illustrative
material aims at broadening the student's knowledge of Russian culture.
Russian Literature
1. A general review of Earlier Russian literature before Lomonosov.
2. XVIII century: Lomonosov, Trediakovsky, Sumarokov, Derghavin on the spot
of European Classicism.
3. The Early XIX century: Karamzin and Ghukovsky (Sentimentalism and earlier
Romanticism)
4. Pushkin: earlier Romantic poems, "Boris Godunov" and "Eugeny Onegin"
5. Pushkin's prose, dramas and later poems
6. Poetry of Pushkin's epoch: Baratynsky, Batushkov, Delvig
7. Lermontov's poetry
8. Lermontov's prose
9. Gogol
10. Turgenev
11. Saltycov-Shedrin and Leskov
12. Tutchev, Fet, Nekrasov
13. Earlier Dostoevsky and Tolstoy
14. Later novels by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky
15. Chechov and earlier Gorky (dramas)
16. The poetry of "The silver age": Block, A. Bely, Kuzmin, Chodasevich.
17. "The great four": Achmatova, Cvetaeva, Mandelshtam, Pasternak
18. Bunin and Nabokov (Russian period)
19. Bulgakov and Platonov
20. The great "split" of Russian literature into "the literature of
emigration" and "the soviet literature": general review
21. The main trends of the 60-s and the 70-s: Shukshin, Trifonov, Aksenov,
Venechka Erofeev, Sasha Sokolov, Dovlatov
22. Joseph Brodsky
23. The modern prose
24. The modern poetry