RUSS 203
Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature in Translation Fall 2025
Division I
Cross-listed COMP 203

This course will introduce you to some of the most influential literary texts of the nineteenth-century Russian literature that became moral, ideological, and aesthetic touchstones for all later periods of Russian culture. We will study the works of Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Turgenev, Chernyshevsky, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov with attention to their thematic and aesthetic preoccupations, socio-political and philosophical contributions, and historical contexts. Topics of particular interest include Russia’s national and imperial identity; Russia’s experiment in Westernization; questions of religion and science; the fluctuating meanings of social class and rebellion. By the end of this course, you will have acquired a basic understanding of the history, aesthetics, and politics of nineteenth-century Russian literary culture, as well as its broader legacy. You will have strengthened your reading and writing skills through training to read primary texts closely and analytically. All readings are in English.