Slavic Languages & Literatures
- The Ukrainian Studies Initiative is pleased to announce the first competition for Ukrainian Studies scholarships! Thanks to the assistance of the Ukrainian Studies Fund and the generosity of the Ukrainian community in Chicago, we can now offer $1000... Read full story
Events
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- The growth of Ukrainian Studies on campus caught the attention of the Daily Illini. You are invited to read the feature...
- The annual Slavic talent show and awards ceremony on April 30 celebrated the achievements of our students. Once again this year, a large number of awards were won by Slavic language students, from national awards and...
- The Slavic Department was recently featured in the student-produced news feature program "The Quad." Student journalist Aaron Anastos produced the segment, featuring interviews with Slavic major Louise Shannon and Professor...
SLAV 452/CWL 453 Eastern Europe and Postcoloniality
This course examines historical and scholarly debates about the (post)coloniality of the Central and East European regions. In the past few decades, scholars and laymen alike have increasingly borrowed the language and concepts of postcolonial studies to reframe Central and Eastern Europe’s multiple, overlapping legacies of imperial rule. In this course, students will read and analyze new theoretical and empirical studies about the applicability of the colonial and postcolonial paradigms to the region’s past and present. Areas of particular emphasis include Central Asia, the Caucasus, the Balkans, Ukraine, and Poland. Prof. Wright
RUSS 219 Soviet/Russian Cinema
Eisenstein! Dziga Vertov! Dovzhenko! Revolutionary masterpieces, unforgettable heroes, terrifying enemies—all propaganda! Can cinema make us love heroes, hate enemies, and believe in a political vision? From the Bolshevik Revolution to Putin’s Russia, this course explores how Soviet and post-Soviet cinema turns art into political persuasion. From Eisenstein’s revolutionary masterpieces to contemporary films, we will examine not only what films tell us, but how they make us believe it—through montage, camera work, sound, and visual storytelling. We will compare how filmmakers construct heroes and enemies, represent the Other through race, class, and gender, and adapt their messages to changing political agendas. Join us to discover the masterpieces of Soviet and post-Soviet cinema, uncover the secrets of cinematic propaganda, and learn to see beyond the magic of the screen! Prof Dzyadevych
UKR 498: Problems in Ukrainian Literature
Ukraine: The Nation of Poets This course explores major works and figures in Ukrainian literature and culture that have shaped modern Ukrainian nationhood and identity. Spanning more than a thousand years, from Kyivan Rus through the Baroque and Romantic periods, modernism, the Ukrainian national revival of 1917–1920, the Soviet era, independence, and the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war, the course examines the topics of imperialism, colonialism, nationalism, feminism, resistance, and war. Students will have opportunities to meet contemporary Ukrainian writers and scholars on campus. Prof. Khometa
SLAV 477: Post-Communist Fiction
Students will read a number of novels published after 1989 in formerly communist countries. Through background readings and discussion of the novels, they will learn about the social and economic changes that were occurring in these societies in the “transition” to democratic forms of government and capitalist economies. More centrally, students will learn how some of the most critically acclaimed writers of this period have chosen to represent this period in fiction. Students will be able to discuss recurrent themes in this multinational literature (such as paranoia, carnival, dislocation, corporeal experience, crime and mafia, nostalgia) and the varied literary techniques employed (palimpsest texts, unreliable narrators, misdirection and mystification, use of popular genres, metanarrative). Students will gain understanding of theories of postmodernism and engage with debates on their relevance for these literatures. Prof. Cooper