Reading and composition course based on works of Russian and other Slavic writers, either written in English or translated into English. As students develop strategies of writing and interpretation, they will become acquainted with a particular theme in Russian and/or Slavic literatures and their major voices. R5A satisfies the first half of the Reading and Composition requirement, and R5B satisfies the second half.

Documentary literature operates on the edge of categories traditionally conceived of as oppositional: “fact” and “fiction.” Documentary art lays some claim to “truth”—however ambiguous or problematic—while asserting an aesthetic form that inevitably complicates this claim. Documentary literature, moreover, is not written by all-knowing, impartial robots, but by human beings, with subjective experiences, unconscious desires, and imperfect memories. There is no “true story” not filtered through its witness and narrator. As a result of its intimate connections to memory and subjectivity, documentary literature can come to resemble literature of the fantastic—the realm of dreams, nightmares, and phantasmagoria—in unexpected and intriguing ways. According to common sense, documentary literature’s connection to “fact” is self-evident, while ghost stories and uncanny tales are paradigmatic examples of “fiction.” But memory is not an unimpeachable chronicle of “objective reality”—in a legal setting, eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. Conversely, fantasy does not emerge from nowhere, but has its roots in the experiences of the fantasizer. In literature and life, dreams exemplify this tension. On one level, dreaming is a form of memory and remembrance, emerging from daily experience; on another, it is the most commonplace and vibrant manifestation of fantasy. Our primary sources will span from “tales of the fantastic” to psychoanalytic case studies to documentary literary texts concerning traumatic historical experience—most prominently, the Holocaust. Most of these primary texts will come from the Russian literary tradition, including works by writers from Aleksandr Pushkin and Nikolai Gogol to Vasily Grossman and Anatoly Kuznetsov. Our final text, D.M. Thomas’s The White Hotel, fits squarely in both halves of the course: at once a Freudian fever dream and an attempt to work through the 20th century’s greatest historical traumas. Our primary interpretive lens will be literary theory informed by psychoanalysis, which has much to say on dreams, fantasies, and traumatic experience—not to mention the intimate connections between them. This course will satisfy the R5B requirement. In addition to completing regular writing assignments and assigned readings, students will be expected to practice their skills with independent research: the identification and proper use of relevant secondary sources and the development of a cogent research project. Texts for purchase (other readings will be made available on bCourses): Anatoly Kuznetsov, Babi Yar (ISBN 978-1250883834) D.M Thomas, The White Hotel (ISBN 978-0140231731)

Requisites

• Previously passed an R_A course with a letter grade of C- or better. Previously passed an articulated R_A course with a letter grade of C- or better. Score a 4 on the Advanced Placement Exam in English Literature. Score a 4 or 5 on the Advanced Placement Exam in English Language and Composition. Score of 5, 6, or 7 on the International Baccalaureate Higher Level Examination in English.

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills