Russian Literature

Russian Literature at Oregon: A Storied Tradition In the late 1960s, when Professors James Rice and Albert Leong were hired to develop a program in Russian literature under the aegis of the German Department, UO had one of very few such programs on the West Coast. Together with Slavic linguist John Beebe and senior language instructor Fruim Yurevich, as well as colleagues in history, anthropology, art history, and other fields, Professors Rice and Leong were able to generate tremendous interest in Russian literature on the part of both students and the general public and to elevate their program into a separate Russian Department, with degree programs at the bachelor’s and master’s levels. In 1976, Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky came to the Russian Department for an extended visit. In 1989, a generous grant from donor Marjorie Lindholm transformed Oregon’s Russian Department into one of the liveliest centers of Russian literary and cultural studies in the United States. For the next thirteen years, the Lindholm Endowed Professorship in Russian Language, Literature, and Culture brought a series of world-renowned Russian writers, artists, and critics to Eugene as visiting professors for periods ranging from two weeks to an academic quarter. Lindholm Professors included sculptor Ernst Neizvestny, prose writers Vladimir Voinovich, Tatyana Tolstaya, Lev Loseff, Andrei Sinyavsky, and Ruth Zernova, poet Vladimir Ufliand, historian Boris Mironov, linguist Catherine Chvany, and cultural critics Efim Etkind, Helena Goscilo, and, most recently (in 2002) Mikhail Epshtein. During their stays in Eugene, the Lindholm Professors gave public lectures and readings and taught advanced courses on various aspects of Russian culture. Today, a new generation of scholars and students is carrying on the tradition of Russian literary studies at Oregon. Although the Russian Department has been integrated into REESC, we continue to offer comprehensive coursework in Russian literature for the Master’s degree, and concentrators in Russian literature may be able to continue their studies at the doctoral level in the Program in Comparative Literature at UO or in a reputable program elsewhere. Please consider joining us for your graduate studies!

Program of study

Like other disciplinary concentrations in REESC’s MA program, the Russian literature concentration includes three components: coursework within the discipline, a comprehensive written exam, and a thesis, as well as language study and electives in other fields. The nature of a graduate student’s coursework will depend on his or her individual goals; students interested in Russian literature as part of an interdisciplinary, terminal MA may wish to spend much of their time exploring other fields, and limit their coursework in Russian literature to the minimum requirement of four graduate courses, while students who intend to continue their study of Russian literature at the Ph.D. level will want to take as many courses in Russian literature as they can. The program is intimate enough that students can expect to work closely with their professors. In addition to regularly-offered research seminars and topical courses, graduate students have the option of arranging with professors to do one-on-one reading and conference courses on specific subjects or authors.

Students should try to plan their course of study in such a way as to take a reduced courseload in winter and spring of the second year, so as to concentrate on exam preparation and the thesis respectively (this can be done by signing up for credits in RUSS 605 Reading and RUSS 603 Thesis). The comprehensive exam in Russian literature consists of two unequal parts. In the first part, students will be asked to identify a number of keywords in modern Russian literature, such as might appear in an undergraduate survey course. Thus, they will have to show their general mastery of the major authors and movements in Russian literature from the 18th century to the present. In the second, more substantial, part, students select four broad topic areas, in conjunction with their primary adviser, and work out a reading program, as well as an essay question that covers the readings, for each. Readings should include major works of Russian literature as well as some criticism. Two of these questions will be on the exam.

The thesis should be a major piece of literary analysis, roughly 45-100 pages long, based on original texts as well as the relevant secondary and theoretical literature. Reading in Russian is mandatory. Ideally, students should develop a thesis topic at the end of the first year of coursework so as to begin researching it over the summer.

Recent graduate courses in Russian literature have included:

RUSS 507 Russia’s Roaring Twenties (Presto)
RUSS 511 Pushkin and His Era (Nemirovskaya)
RUSS 526 Russian Symbolism and Decadence (Presto)
RUSS 526 Russian Modernism (Presto)
RUSS 534 Bulgakov and Chekhov (Nemirovskaya)
RUSS 534 Russian Literature and Folklore (Rice)
RUSS 534 Russian Orentalism/Russian Empire in Literature (Hokanson)
RUSS 510 Russian Drama (Nemirovskaya)

In addition, several courses in Comparative Literature have significant Russian components and can be used to fulfill requirements in REESC. Recent examples include:

COLT 561 Studies in Contemporary Theory: Writing Disaster (Presto)
COLT 518 Modernisms: Gender and Modernism (Presto)

Faculty

Katya Hokanson, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature. Ph.D. Stanford University, 1994. Publications include “Onegin’s Journey: The Orient Revisited,” in Pushkin Review (2000); “The Captivating Crimea: Visions of Empire in ‘The Fountain of Bakhchiserai’,” in Russian Subjects: Nation, Empire, and Russia’s Golden Age, ed. Monika Greenleaf and Stephen Moeller-Sally (1998); and “Literary Imperialism, Narodnost’, and Pushkin’s Invention of the Caucasus,” in Russian Review (1994). She is completing a monograph entitled On the Verge of Empire: Writing at Russia’s Border, which points out the centrality of literature connected to the imperial borderlands to the establishment of a Russian literary canon. A second major project centers on Russian women’s travel writing. Teaching areas: 19th-century Russian literature, Pushkin, Orientalism, Russian women’s writing, literary theory.

Jenifer Presto, Associate Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature. Ph.D. University of Wisconsin, 1996. Author of the forthcoming book Beyond the Flesh: Aleksandr Blok, Zinaida Gippius, and the Symbolist Sublimation of Sex (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008) and of journal articles on Russian poetic modernism in Slavic Review, Russian Literature, and Slavic and East European Journal. Contributor to the prize-winning volume A History of Women’s Writing in Russia (Cambridge, 2002). Professor Presto has recently begun work on a new project, tentatively entitled The Other Motherland: Italy and the 20th-century Russian Imagination, which explores the identification of such writers as Blok, Gorky, and Brodsky with Italy as well as Russians’ cultural encounters with Italy more generally. Having won a National Council of East European and Eurasian Research fellowship for spring and summer, 2006, she will be conducting research on this project in Italy and Russia. Teaching interests include various topics in Russian modernism, film and literature, gender studies, Russian poetry, and other Russian and comparative themes.

James L. Rice, Professor Emeritus. Ph.D. University of Chicago, 1965. Author of Dostoevsky and the Healing Art (Ardis, 1985) and Freud’s Russia: National Identity in the Evolution of Psychoanalysis (Transaction Pub., 1993). His most recent scholarly articles (of roughly 30) include “Dostoevsky’s Endgame: The Projected Sequel to The Brothers Karamazov,” forthcoming in Slavic Review; “A Note on Teaching Eugene Onegin in English,” Pushkin Review 6-7 (2003-4); “Comic Devices in ‘The Death of Ivan Il’ich’,” Slavic and East European Journal, vol. 47, no. 1 (spring, 2003), 77-95; and “‘Why must people be unhappy?’ Pnin for Pedagogical Purposes,” Caryl Emerson Festschrift (forthcoming). He is currently writing an article on “Tolstoy’s Middle Years: Crisis and Recovery,” a memoir about Joseph Brodsky, and a book on Henry James’s response to Turgenev. Although retired from teaching, he may be available for consultation.

Adjunct Faculty

Julia Nemirovskaya, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Russian. Ph.D. Moscow State University, 1991. Author of numerous articles in Russian on Pushkin, diverse Russian poets, and contemporary Russian literature, as well as the acclaimed Russian-language textbook Inside the Russian Soul: A Historical Survey of Russian Cultural Patterns (1997). She is also a published author of poetry and short fiction; translations of her literary work can be found in Glas: New Russian Writing, The Literary Review, and Two Lines: A Journal of Translation. Teaching interests center on Russian literary classics, Russian drama, Russian culture, and theater as a vehicle for Russian language study.