The major in Russian and East European studies is designed to provide a broad background in Russian, Soviet, and East European history, politics, economics, and literature. To be accepted into the program, students must have a minimum overall average of B in courses related to the major.

Major requirements. Majors must complete three years of college-level Russian or the equivalent. Each student, in consultation with an advisor, will work out an individual program consisting of at least one course from each of the fields listed below (politics and economics, history, and literature) and four more courses in the three fields (distributed as agreed with the advisor).

Politics and Economics

• ECON265 Economies in Transition
• GOVT274 Russian Politics

History

• HIST155 The Intelligentsia and Power: The Struggle for Socialism in the Early Soviet Period
• HIST156 East European Jewish Experience
• HIST218 Russian History to 1881
• HIST219 Russian and Soviet History 1881 to Present

Language and Literature

• RUSS101/102 Elementary Russian
• RUSS201/202 Intermediate Russian
• RUSS301/302 Third-Year Russian
• RUSS205 The 19th-Century Russian Novel
• RUSS206 A Matter of Life and Death: Fiction in the Soviet Era
• RUSS207 Popular Culture in Russia
• RUSS209 The Poor Clerk: Origins of the Petersburg Tale
• RUSS220 Speak, Memory: Autobiography and Memoir in Russian Literature
• RUSS222 Doubles in Literature
• RUSS240 Reading Stories
• RUSS250 Pushkin
• RUSS251 Dostoevsky
• RUSS252 Tolstoy
• RUSS253 Gogol and the Short Story
• RUSS254 Murder and Adultery: The French and Russian Novel
• RUSS255 The Central and East European Novel
• RUSS260 Dostoevsky's Brat'ia Karamazovy
• RUSS263 Nabokov and Cultural Synthesis
• RUSS265 Kino: Russia at the Movies
• RUSS266 Architects and Inventors of the Word: Russian Modernist Poetry
• RUSS285 Short Prose of the 20th Century
• RUSS290 The Fantastic in Narrative Imagination
• RUSS303 Advanced Russian: Stylistics

Study abroad. Majors are strongly encouraged to participate in either a summer or a semester program of study in the former Soviet Union (FSU), for which academic credit will be given.

Departmental honors. To qualify to receive honors or high honors in Russian and East European studies, a student must write a senior thesis that will be evaluated by a committee consisting of the tutor, a second reader from the Russian and East European studies faculty, and one additional reader from the faculty at large. This committee makes the final decision on departmental honors.