RUSS 381ATaming the Russian Empire

Catalog

In this course, we will read short fiction from a variety of Eastern European authors and examine the texts that establish the tradition of Eastern European short fiction as well as those that push its boundaries. We will attend to the formal characteristics of these texts, analyze their approach to storytelling, and ultimately question what these texts reveal about our appetite for narrative. This course will serve as a general survey of Eastern European Literature (with authors featured including Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Bunin, Teffi, Nabokov, Kiš, Schultz, Tolstaya, etc.), as well as a focused introduction to a particular medium in that tradition.