Slavic and
East European
Languages and Literature

Slavic Syllabi

Slavic 130: The Vampire in Eastern European and American Culture
SLAVIC 130 is an introduction to the culture of the Eastern European and East Central European peoples-(Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusans, Poles, Kashubs, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Croats, Bosniaks, Serbs, Macedonians, Bulgarians, Romanians, Hungarians, and Albanians). We will discuss their present distribution, prehistory, and relation to other peoples of Eurasia. We will also survey their early culture, including pagan, animistic, and dualistic religious practices and their Christianization. Our focus will be the myth of the VAMPIRE, which has had enduring power not only in Eastern European folk belief but also in American popular culture right up to the present day. In our study of vampire beliefs, we will cover a wide variety of topics:

• Folk beliefs about the soul, fertility, community safety, and diseases
• The coexistence of pagan and Christian practices in Eastern Europe
• Eastern European rites of social passage
• Boundary-crossers and their demonization
• Folk monsters related to the vampire (Evil Eye, rusalka, nav, mora, etc.)
• The function of monsters in coping with fears, identity issues, & repressed desires
• The historical Dracula-his life; his image in Romanian folklore; how he came to be a symbol of all that is evil in Western culture
• The vampire's changing image from its origins to the present-East European communal demon; Enlightenment puzzle; Romantic Sublime hero; Victorian violator of innocence; Nietschean Superman; old Hollywood sexual predator; new Hollywood sexual brinksman and misunderstood social misfit
• Why the vampire has such enduring power and adaptability as a cultural symbol.

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Slavic 245: Introduction to Slavic Literature and Culture
Selected Slavic or East European literature(s) in its/their cultural context; relationships between literature, film, drama; may include art and music. Contact the department for the current quarter's focus. Previous quarters have covered:

Ukrainian culture: The purpose of this course is to introduce the student to Ukrainian culture in its historical perspective, through its literature, art and music.

Culture of the South Slavs: This course will introduce you to the Slavic peoples of Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hercegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia, various aspects of their cultures, and their relations with each other and their neighbors.

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Slavic 367: The Eastern European Experience in America
This class is designed to learn about the Russians, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Ukrainians, and other East European nationalities (including Krakozhians) that traveled to America to benefit from the freedoms and opportunities America had to offer. The course will also cover how America and its people have benefited from the influx of immigrants from the world over. Whether it is the culture these immigrants brought with them or the cultures they created when they arrived, America has become the enigmatic and wondrous country it is today because of the people who made this journey. We will spend time briefly discussing the history of immigration as well as issues concerning assimilation versus multi-culturalism, the American Dream, stereotypes and racism, what success is, what the definition of home is, and an America without immigrants.

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Slavic 519: Slavic Literature in English Translation from the Beginning to the Present
Emphasis on masterpieces of non-Russian Slavic literatures; epic tradition, Kochanowski, Comenius, Obradovic, Mickiewicz, Shevchenko, Macha, Sienkiewicz, Reymont, Franko, Ukrainka, Vazov, Capek, and Hasek.

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Slavic 583: Cinderella's Fantasy: Gender and Women in Western and Eastern Europe
This course pursues the complementary nature of feminists' notions in West and East European societies and cultures via literature and film. We will adopt an interdisciplinary approach in an attempt to hear women's voices and see images of women all over Europe, from England to Russia. Did State socialism in Eastern Europe "emancipate" women? If yes, what are the consequences? The course also explores the uncomfortable space of gender identity in a time when the very notion of identity is challenged. In order to decipher the myth and reality behind the construction of gender stereotypes we will consider the interplay between psychoanalytic theory and feminist responses to it.

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Slavic 671: Bulgarian for Speakers of Russian
This course will teach you to read modern Bulgarian; it will not devote a lot of time to speaking, writing, or listening. This course presumes a decent knowledge of modern Russian equivalent to at least Russian 561, and preferably Russian 609.

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Slavic 694: Group Studies: The Kosovo Crisis in International Law
(Offered WI00) This is a case-oriented course on the international law of the conflict over Kosovo, aimed at obtaining rigorous understanding on the status of the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the claims over Kosovo as an international crisis, the process of international diplomacy and the failure of the peaceful settlement, NATO's decision to use force, and the law of international responsibility applicable in the conflict. The course is designed for advanced undergraduate and graduate students from all disciplines. There are no special requirements to take the course. The methodology is based on case studies and the active learning approach. Evaluation takes into account attendance, case presentations by work groups, and a term paper.

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Slavic 697: Study at a Foreign Institution
An opportunity for students to study at a foreign institution and receive Ohio State credit for that work. Prereq: Written permission of dept chairperson. Repeatable to a maximum of 45 cr hrs. Students will pay Ohio State fees and any fees in excess of Ohio State tuition, as well as all travel and subsistence costs.

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Slavic 760: Introduction to the Slavic Languages
Slavic 760 is a survey of the Slavic languages and their writing, sound, and grammar systems. The class includes a discussion of the development of the literary languages on the background of general political, cultural, and historical events and movements. It also investigates how the Slavic languages are related to the other Indo-European languages, and to English in particular, with etymological exercises providing illustrations. At the end of the course you will use your newly-acquired knowledge to practice reading bibliographical materials and possibly other short texts in various Slavic languages.

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Slavic 792: Interdepartmental Studies in the Humanities
The goal of the seminar is to discuss the main issues in the field of bilingualism from the psycholinguistic perspective.

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Slavic 800: Bibliography
Course description coming soon.

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Slavic 810: Old Church Slavonic
This course will teach you to read Old Church Slavonic. As a reading course it will be equally useful for literature students who need to read medieval texts and for linguistics students who may be as interested in the language itself as in the texts. It is not a linguistics course, although a considerable amount of linguistics will come up in the process of learning the language. It is assumed that you have a reading knowledge of modern Russian or another Slavic language. The course does not assume any knowledge of linguistics or any Slavic language other than Russian.

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Slavic 812: Readings in Church Slavonic Texts
In introductory courses on Old Church Slavonic and other premodern Slavic languages, there is usually little time to devote to "slow and repeated reading," and even less opportunity to read straight from the manuscript page; yet it is only with such practice that one can develop true familiarity with the graphics, vocabulary, syntax, and style of medieval texts. The goal of Slavic 812 is to develop pragmatic competence in medieval Slavic texts. This will include engaging in close reading and communal sense-making of manuscripts written in the different lands of Slavia Orthodoxa- the Orthodox Slavic tradition. The manuscripts are usually chosen, in part, on the basis of the participants' interests and will represent a variety of handwritings, genres, periods, and recensions (language variants). In close readingings and other practical exercises, this course focuses not only on the meaning of the works but also on the diagnostic features of the recensions, characteristic stylistic and syntactic patterns, and the social function of the text kinds (genres) that were used in Slavia Orthodoxa. This guided multidimensional reading will give you the necessary confidence to do independent work on manuscript sources.

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Slavic 821: Structure of Selected Slavic Languages
A detailed description of the phonetic, phonological, and morphological systems of any of the following: Belarusian, Bulgarian, Czech, Macedonian, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Slovenian, or Ukranian.

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Slavic 834: Medieval Slavic Literatures 9th-14th Century.
Emphasis of the Eastern and South Slavic literatures.

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Slavic 861: History of the South Slavic Languages
This course will attempt to treat all four modern South Slavic languages relatively equally, and analyze not just the history of the languages, but also their present state and structure. There will be occasional references to Old Church Slavonic, which is clearly a South Slavic language, but it will not be treated systematically in this course, since it has a course of its own (Slavic 810), and working on the four modern languages will take all the time available.

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Slavic 862: History of the West Slavic Languages
This course is intended to address the history and structure of the seven West Slavic languages-Czech, Slovak, Upper and Lower Sorbian, Polish, Kashubian/Slovincian, and Polabian. In addition, it is intended to demonstrate different methodological and theoretical issues in (Slavic) Linguistics in general. This course includes discussing writing systems, phonology, morphology, and dialectology, as well as special topics in morphosyntax, syntax, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, and pragmatics, as well as the close readings of West Slavic texts, which illustrate the evolution of the languages and their features in actual contexts.

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Slavic 864: Comparative Slavic Grammar.
In Slavic 864 we thoroughly examine the prehistory and early history of the Slavic languages, with an emphasis on sound changes. The course begins by discussing the main methodologies for reconstruction and the (pre)history of the Slavs up to the time of the earliest texts (Week 1). Then the course will analyze in detail the sound changes that differentiated Slavic from other Indo-European dialects and led to the phonological systems attested in the earliest Slavic texts (Weeks 2-6). After discussing the challenging topic of accentology, we turn to the morphological system, with an emphasis on how it differs from those of other Indo-European dialects, and trace its development into the attested stages. Time permitting, the course closes out the quarter with readings in early Slavic texts and/or other special problems.

The topics covered in Slavic 864 are a standard part of our professional knowledge as Slavic linguists. The knowledge you acquire will help you better to understand the systematic differences between the Slavic languages, the subsequent history of the languages, seemingly bizarre alternations in the languages, and relationships between words. In addition to this knowledge, you will practice some important skills: weighing evidence; speaking about scholarly problems; and giving presentations on scholarly topics in front of your peers.

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Slavic 870: Seminar in Slavic Philology.
Historical and comparative studies in the Slavic languages and related language families.

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Slavic 871: Seminar in Slavic Linguistics.
The goal of the seminar is to take a closer look at the hypothesis of linguistic relativity and how scientists have recently approached it. Semantic metalanguage, cross-cultural studies of the emotion lexicon, lexical coding of color, kinship terminology, lexical categorization, grammatical categories, etc. will be among the topics of the seminar. Students will be able to explore the area of their interest in the language of their study and conduct small-scale research.

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