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Peace, War and Defense

PWAD/SLAV 080 [006M]: The Devil and the Problem of Evil in Russian Literature
Literary Arts (LA) [GC Aesthetic / Literature]
Christopher Putney
This course will consider how the devil and other representatives of "unclean power" have been portrayed in over seven centuries of Russian literature, from the medieval period into the twentieth century. How has Russian literature tried to account for the persistence of radical evil -for which the devil stands as a most powerful metaphor- in a world that was supposedly created by a wholly good, omniscient, and all-powerful God? How does the Russian literary conception of the devil evolve over the centuries? In addition to premodern primary texts, we will read works by Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Bulgakov.

PWAD/SLAV 084 [006M]: Teror for the People: Terrorism in Russian Literature and History
Literary Arts (LA) [GC Aesthetic / Literature]
Madeline Levine
What makes a person become a terrorist? What do terrorists hope to gain through such acts as assassination, arson, bombings? What type of people become terrorists, under what circumstances? And how do societies beset by terror respond? The readings for this seminar will address these questions in reference to the terrorist movement in late nineteenth-century Russia as seen through the eyes of the terrorists themselves and in the fictional creations of writers who made terrorism and terrorists the subject of their novels and short stories. This seminar is about both terrorism as a form of political protest and literature as a medium for reflecting the social and personal tensions that explode into terrorist activity. You will be asked to read critically and passionately, to participate in class discussions, and to write three short papers in response to specific assigned readings. In the end-of-term paper you will analyze the portrayal of a terrorist character in a fictional work of your choice. Also, as a supplemental, self-reflective exercise to remind us that America, too, has a history of home-grown terrorism (for example, John Brown's anti-slavery campaign, the Ku Klux Klan, the Weathermen, abortion-clinic bombings), the class will be divided into small groups, each of which will make an oral presentation to the class about a terrorist organization or incident in US history.

PWAD/SLAV 085 [006M]: Children and War
Literary Arts (LA) [GC Aesthetic / Literature]
Madeline Levine
Who speaks for children, and by what right? These are the central questions wwe will ask as we study children's wartime diaries and drawings, the adult memoirs of child-survivors, and imaginative representations of children's suffering in fiction and film. Through daily class discussion, writing assignments, and group projects we will engage such questions as: can children communicate their own experience? Can memory be trusted? Is fiction more powerful, or even, in a sense, more truthful, than "fact"?

Students will grapple analytically with these issues in essays and class discussions. There will also be ample opportunity for expressing more emotional responses in class and in a journal (which will not be graded). All assigned materials deal with World War II in Eastern Europe, the professor's area of expertise, but students may choose to focus on other wars in their term papers (8-10 pages) and/or group projects (in-class or on-line presentations).