This course, offered in the fall semester as part of a yearlong sequence, introduces students to Russian language and culture with an emphasis on listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Students also engage with contemporary Russian culture and everyday life through a variety of authentic texts including music, film, and television. Conducted in Russian.

This course, offered in the winter semester, is a continuation of RUSS 101 with an emphasis on acquiring all four language competencies. The course continues to foster building basic fluency and ability to read simplified passages in Russian. Students continue their immersion in Russian culture through authentic materials including music, animation, film, and social media. Conducted in Russian.

This course examines the role of youth and student culture in shaping East European societies in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Course materials including film, literature, journalism, and music provide an introduction to East European cultural and social history and encourage students to explore themes of identity, activism, expression, and community. As students move from considering the role of youth in the Russian Revolution to contemporary student protests in support of human rights, class discussions bring new perspectives to the ways young people both navigate and foster change in the times and spaces they occupy. Conducted in English.

This course, offered in the fall semester, is a continuation of Elementary Russian, with an emphasis on fostering all four language competencies. Students focus on more detailed study of grammatical issues; vocabulary building and intermediate fluency; reading more complicated, unedited Russian prose texts; and engaging in composing extended forms of written discourse. Students are immersed in contemporary Russian culture through a variety of authentic materials including music, animation, film, art, social media, and press. Conducted in Russian. Prerequisite(s): RUSS 102.

This course, offered in the winter semester, is a continuation of RUSS 201 and completes students' introduction to the structure of the Russian language. Emphasis is placed on students' written and verbal communication skills with a focus on expressing opinions and perspectives. This course culminates in a student-written and -produced film synthesizing the language and cultural awareness students build in their first two years of Russian studies. Conducted in Russian. Prerequisite(s): RUSS 201.

This course explores the shifting and varying relationships between peoples of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and the Russian Federation and the natural world. We will examine the often contradictory ways people understand and express those relationships, presenting nature alternately as prison, as escape, as an asset, as a threat, as salvation, as home, or as distant—often frozen—other world. Using sources from a broad range of genres and disciplines, we will look at how and why people express these attitudes and how these attitudes bear on historical and contemporary behaviors and politics. Conducted in English.

Cold War Identities explores the ways the combative and competitive culture of the Cold War impacted discourses surrounding race, sexual and gender identities, and national and ethnic identities in the United States, the Soviet Union, and in their respective spheres of influence. Working with materials from across cultural, political, and commercial spheres, students will engage with a fundamental contradiction of the Cold War: the ways superpowers both self-represented as bastions or freedom and progress, while simultaneously using the context of international competition as a justification for persecution of minoritized people within their own countries. With a focus on primary documents, the course builds students’ skills in evaluating and understanding discussions and representations of identity and their impacts across a broad range of media and popular culture. Conducted in English.

The course analyzes many aspects of Russian folk and popular culture from pre-Christian to post-Soviet Russia and how folklore continues to influence contemporary Russian culture. The first part of the course concentrates on Russian folk belief as expressed through oral lore, visual arts, and music. The second part of the course focuses on the myth and folktale in the Soviet Union. The course concludes with the uses of folklore in Putin’s Russia and the interaction between the forms of traditional folklore and modern popular culture. Conducted in English. This course is not open to students who have completed RUSS S27.

Indigenous movements for land, rights, and cultural preservation have spread to and originated in all corners of the world. However, the global nature of these movements at times obscures ways of being Indigenous in differing contexts. This course analyzes Indigeneity in both the United States and Russia today. Through reading and analyzing ethnography, theory, and literature, it focuses on Indigenous peoples in a comparative context. Rather than prioritizing concern with Indigenous peoples emerging from the US, it attempts to demonstrate what Indigeneity has been in both the United States and Russia and what it is and means today. It asks the following questions: what is Indigeneity and who is Indigenous; how is Indigenous identity constructed and by whom? Topics include: Indigeneity and the State, Revitalization and Resurgence, Indigenous People and Nature Protection, and Hemispheric and Global Indigeneities.

The course engages students with contemporary Russia through cinema and discusses a European culture that is, at the same time, non-Western in its political make-up. Topics discussed include the colonial center and its contemporary political and cultural ambitions, imperial periphery and Russia’s "quiet others," the Russian Idea in New Auteurism, Putin’s blockbusters, Russia’s alterities (minorities, sexualities, taboo Russia), Global Russia (the United States, Europe, Russia, and Ukraine). Conducted in English.

This course, normally offered in the fall semester, focuses on advancing students’ fluency in Russian in all four competencies. Students are exposed to a variety of unedited materials and registers and work closely with contemporary Russian culture. Emphasis is placed on engaging students in advanced language production and their critical analysis of major Russian cultural figures, trends, media, and politics. Conducted in Russian. Prerequisite(s): RUSS 202.

This course, normally offered in the winter semester, is a continuation of RUSS 301, in which students read and discuss texts in a variety of styles from literature to journalism. Students write a number of short papers ranging from opinion pieces to literary parodies. Conducted in Russian. This course may be repeated once for credit with permission of the instructor. Prerequisite(s): RUSS 301.

What is a cyborg and how does this political and cultural concept evolve through various historical periods? How are transformative relations between humans, animals, and machines imagined across cultural texts? What is trans- and post-humanism? The course examines changing ideas of constructing, enhancing, and technologizing body and mind in the Soviet Union and modern Russia. Students engage with ideas of the biopolitical remaking of humans, rejuvenating bodies surgically, prosthetically, pharmacologically, and digitally. Topics discussed include technologies of gender and gender technologies, identity politics, immortalization narratives, geopolitics. Conducted in English. Recommended background: prior coursework in literature or film.

Students, in consultation with a faculty advisor, individually design and plan a course of study or research not offered in the curriculum. Course work includes a reflective component, evaluation, and completion of an agreed-upon product. Sponsorship by a faculty member in the program/department, a course prospectus, and permission of the chair are required. Students may register for no more than one independent study per semester.

This interdisciplinary course examines the questions, concepts, and potential surrounding puppets through a combination of hands-on work and play with puppets, discussion, readings, and viewings of puppet performances. Readings and other materials offer perspectives on what puppets are, how they interact with audiences, and what makes puppet performance a distinct forum for exploring questions about bodies and identities. Students test these ideas together using actual puppets to see how theory and practice collide. The course concludes with a collective project using puppets to engage with the community at Bates and beyond. Conducted in English.

The course analyzes many aspects of Russian folk and popular culture from pre-Christian to post-Soviet Russia and how folklore continues to influence contemporary Russian culture. The first part of the course concentrates on Russian folk belief as expressed through oral lore, visual arts, and music. The second part of the course focuses on the myth and folktale in the Soviet Union. The course concludes with the uses of folklore in Putin’s Russia and the interaction between the forms of traditional folklore and modern popular culture. Conducted in English.

Students, in consultation with a faculty advisor, individually design and plan a course of study or research not offered in the curriculum. Course work includes a reflective component, evaluation, and completion of an agreed-upon product. Sponsorship by a faculty member in the program/department, a course prospectus, and permission of the chair are required. Students may register for no more than one independent study during a Short Term.