Courses

All of the courses listed on this page count towards Notre Dame’s Globally Engaged Citizens Program. For more information, visit the Center for the Study of Languages and Cultures website. 

Courses offered every fall semester

RU 10101 – Beginning Russian I

Develops students’ skills in listening, speaking, reading, and writing while also fostering an appreciation for Russian culture. Emphasis is placed on the acquisition of basic structures, vocabulary, and sound systems. Students will be encouraged to use their language skills to communicate and interact in a variety of situations and contexts. 4 credits; meets 3 days a week.

RU 20101 – Intermediate Russian I

This is the first half of a 2-semester review of Russian grammar designed to facilitate a near-native proficiency with the form and function of Russian nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Exceptional forms are stressed, and reading selections on contemporary Russian life and excerpts from literature are employed to improve comprehension and build conversational and writing skills. Open to students who have completed RU 10102 or have placed into the course via online placement exam. 3 credits.

RU 40101 – Advanced Russian I

The first half of a year-long course designed to significantly improve students’ comprehension and self-expression skills in Russian, serving as a preparation for Russian literature courses in the original. The course will include an intensive review of Russian grammar; Russian stylistics, syntax, and grammar at the advanced level; reading and analysis of a wide range of 19th-century Russian literary texts; writing essays in Russian; and extensive work on vocabulary building and advanced conversation skills. Open to students who have completed RU 20102. 3 credits.

Courses offered every spring semester

RU 10102 – Beginning Russian II

Continuation of Beginning Russian I. Develops students’ skills in listening, speaking, reading, and writing while also fostering an appreciation for Russian culture. Emphasis is placed on the acquisition of basic structures, vocabulary, and sound systems. Students will be encouraged to use their language skills to communicate and interact in a variety of situations and contexts. Open to students who have completed RU 10101 or have placed into the course via online placement exam. 4 credits; meets 3 days a week. 

RU 20102 – Intermediate Russian II

This is the second half of a 2-semester review of Russian grammar designed to facilitate a near-native proficiency with the form and function of Russian nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Exceptional forms are stressed, and reading selections on contemporary Russian life and excerpts from literature are employed to improve comprehension and build conversational and writing skills. Open to students who have completed RU 20201 or have placed into the course via online placement exam. 3 credits.

RU 40102 – Advanced Russian II

This is the second half of a year-long course designed to significantly improve students’ comprehension and self-expression skills in Russian, serving as a preparation for Russian literature courses in the original. The course will include an intensive review of Russian grammar; Russian stylistics, syntax, and grammar at the advanced level; reading and analysis of a wide range of 20th-century Russian literary texts (including fiction, poetry, interviews, songs, and newspaper materials); writing essays in Russian; and extensive work on vocabulary building and advanced conversation skills. Open to students who have completed RU 40102. 3 credits.

Fall 2023 courses taught in Russian

RU 10001 – Introduction to Russian (TBA)

This one-credit class is designed to prepare students for an easy transition into our Beginning Russian I course, which is offered in the fall. By the end of the semester, students will 1) use the Cyrillic alphabet with confidence, 2) understand the fundamentals of Russian phonetics and grammar, and 3) be able to speak and write briefly about their personal and university biographies. The course will be scheduled to accommodate student schedules. 1 credit.

RU 22103 – Intermediate Russian Tutorial (TBA)

Students work with a native speaker in small groups of 2 or 3 to activate and intensively practice the material covered in Intermediate Russian II. Although this course focuses on all modes of language learning — speaking, listening, reading, writing, and cultural proficiency — particular emphasis is given to improving students’ speaking abilities. Open to students who are concurrently enrolled in RU 20102, or with permission of instructor. 1 credit.

RU 30101 – Advanced Russian I (Sean Griffin)

This year-long course is designed to significantly improve students' comprehension and self-expression skills in Russian, serving as a preparation for Russian literature courses in the original. The course will include an intensive review of Russian grammar; Russian stylistics, syntax, and grammar at the advanced level; reading and analysis of a wide range of 19th-century Russian literary texts; writing essays in Russian; and extensive work on vocabulary building and advanced conversation skills. 3 credits

RU 32103 – Advanced Russian Tutorial (TBA)

Students work with a native speaker in small groups to activate and intensively practice the material covered in Advanced Russian I. Although this course focuses on all modes of language learning (speaking, listening, reading, writing, and cultural proficiency), particular emphasis is given to improving students’ speaking abilities. Open to students who are concurrently enrolled in RU 40101, or with permission of instructor. 1 credit.

RU 43100 – Russian Short Stories (Arpi Movsesian)

Love and death are overwhelming experiences that, in many ways, define our orientation in and toward the world. At the same time, love and death are not always describable within the framework of language. Nevertheless, authors have tried to capture some of their essence for centuries. In this course, we will be reading Russophone short stories from the 19 th through the 21 st centuries that grapple with these two philosophically beguiling ideas. Authors like Gogol, Dostoevsky, Korolenko, Babel, Teffi, and others ask: Does love exist and can it be knowable or comprehensible? Is death a self-evident end, or are we always already beings moving toward death from the moment we are born? We will explore these rich themes as offered by Russophone writers in their philosophical, political, historical, and social contexts. All readings and discussions will be in Russian. 3 credits

Fall 2023 courses taught in English

RU 30202 –Tolstoy (Thomas Marullo)

TLonely, lost, wondering about the meaning of it all? Tolstoy has the answers! “War and Peace in Literature and Life (in English)” is an in-depth survey of the major fiction of one of the world’s greatest and most provocative writers and thinkers. Topics to be discussed: the evolution of the Tolstoyan hero and heroine within the contest of the writer’s fiction, as well as with the social and literary polemics of the age; the interplay of “patriarchal,” “matriarchal,” and “messianic” voices; the dynamics of Russian soul and soil; the conflict between city and country, “old” and “new,” nobleman and peasant, Russia and the West; and, Tolstoy’s political, theological, and epistemological visions, in particular, his theory of history, his defense of love, marriage, and family, his endorsement of “rational egoism,” his distrust of “great men” in life, and most importantly, his tried-and-true program for happy and productive lives. 3 credits. Counts for WKAL

RU 30350 – Ukrainian and Russian Culture (Tetyana Shlikhar)

The claim that Russians and Ukrainians are one people, “a single whole,” has been resounding in Russian mass media, film, and other discourses for the last two decades. Putin took a pronounced colonial turn with his return to the Presidency in 2012, describing Russia as a state-civilization, in which Russians and Ukrainians are joined in “spiritual unity.” History thus serves as a justification for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This course will look at historical facts and cultural artifacts of Russia and Ukraine to determine the roots of Russia’s current aggression in Ukraine. Among others, the course will discuss the following questions. Is Kyivan Rus part of Russian or Ukrainian history, or neither? Does Ukraine have its own history and culture that is distinct from Russian? Are Ukrainians divided into Russian-speakers (aspiring to join Russia) and Ukrainian-speaking nationalists (aspiring to EU)? The course will examine the origins, points of intersection and divergence of Ukrainian and Russian cultures through the lens of history, art, and literature from the Christianization of Rus (10th century) to the present time. We will look at the history of Russian imperialism, centuries of appropriation of Ukrainian cultural achievements, annihilation of Ukrainian traditions, extermination of Ukrainian intellectuals, and the politics of Russification with the purpose to see how the current events reflect a tendency that has already existed for centuries. 3 credits

RU 30355 – From Rasputin to Putin (Semion Lyandres)

This lecture course examines some of the most important events, ideas, and personalities that shaped late Imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet periods of Russian history during the last one hundred years: from the outbreak of the First World War and the Revolutions of 1905 and 1917 through the Great Terror of the 1930s, the experience of the Second World War and the emergence of the Soviet Empire, late Stalinism and post-Stalinist developed or mature socialism, the collapse of the communist rule and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, as well as Russia's uneasy transition "out of Totalitarianism" and into Putin's authoritarianism during the first fourteen years of the twentieth-first century. The course is designed for history majors as well as for students in other disciplines with or without background in modern Russian and East European history. 3 credits. Counts for WKHI. 

RU 33500 – Behind the Iron Curtain (Emily Wang) 

Was the Soviet Union a "workers paradise" or an "evil empire?" Nearly three decades after this country transformed into what we now call "post-Soviet space," the legacy of the USSR looms large in international politics and culture. This course will offer students an introduction to Soviet history through film, which Lenin famously called "the most important of the arts," and literature, which Soviet writers used to "engineer human souls." Since the 1917 Revolution, art has had a close relationship to the Soviet state. At the same time, writers and filmmakers with individualistic and even rebellious tendencies have created some of the twentieth century's greatest masterpieces, including Dziga Vertov's Man With a Movie Camera and Mikhail Bulgakov's Master and Margarita. In this class we will explore how this tense relationship between art and the state developed in the first half of the twentieth century. Since cultural context is an important lens for our analysis, each artistic work will be accompanied by historical readings about the period in which it was produced, as well as artistic manifestos and contemporary reviews, when relevant. All films will be shown with subtitles and all readings offered in English. Students of the Russian language have the option of discussing the course material in Russian once a week with the instructor in a group for an additional course credit. 3 credits. Counts for WKAL and MESE. 

RU 40003 – Tour Across Russia

This course surveys modern Russian traditions and culture from the perspective of the most significant Russian cities. Topics include a brief history of each city, its cultural heritage, and its contributions to Russian literature and modern society. Through lectures and discussion, we will consider cities in European Russia (St. Petersburg, Moscow, Ryazan', Kaliningrad), Siberia (Irkutsk, Novosibirsk), and the Russian Far East (Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, Yuzno-Sakhalinsk). We will learn which of them gave birth to a widely popular intellectual club, which one was visited by a famous Russian writer after an eighty-two day journey, which was the place where an extremely popular Russian band started its career, etc. We will uncover these and other gems of Russian culture by listening to songs, reading poems, training our brains playing smart games, and many other activities full of Russian Spirit. 1 credit