Join the SEELC this Summer in one of our online courses! Maybe you need to fill a GE requirement, need the credits, or simply want to take a class you have missed before? Whatever the reason, we welcome you to sign up today.

All courses taught in English 

May Term 4-Week Course

RUSSIAN 2335.99: Russian Culture (Online)

Russian culture from its foundations to the 21st century through analysis of literature, film, music, visual arts, beliefs, and customs. Russia has always been a fascinating place, with its mixture of globe-shaking politics and world-class culture. The future -- whatever it holds -- promises nothing less. Through an analysis of literature, films, and the visual arts, we will learn about Russia and the USSR in the twentieth century and its impact on the world. 

GE Foundation: Historical and Cultural Studies

First-Session 8-Week Courses 

RUSSIAN 3355.99: Vodka in Russian Society and Culture: Deconstructing Myths (Online)

Vodka in Russia is important to virtually all social functions, is used as a home remedy for ailments, and is a frequent theme of jokes, folk songs, films, and literature. It also has an important political history, having long been used by the Russian (and Soviet) state as a form of social control. This course explores Russian culture and history through its most famous drink.

GEL Cultures and Ideas, GEL Diversity: Global Studies

RUSSIAN 3480.99: The Russian Spy: Cultures of Surveillance, Secret Agents, & Hacking from the Cold War through Today (Online)

This course explores the concept of the spy in the cultural imaginations of both Russia and the West from the early 20th century through the present. Topics will include stereotyping in popular culture, the relationship between fiction and the political imagination, Western (especially American) and Russian views of each other, the Cold War, privacy, security, fear, and war.  

GE Foundation: Historical and Cultural Studies

SLAVIC 2230.99: Vampires, Monstrosity, and Evil: From Slavic Myth to Twilight (Online)

Changing approaches to evil as embodied in vampires in East European folk belief & European & American pop culture; function of vampire & monster tales in cultural context, including peasant world & West from Enlightenment to now. 

GE Foundation: Historical and Cultural Studies; GEL Cultures and Ideas, GEL Diversity: Global Studies

SLAVIC 2365.99: Sports, Socialists, and Society in Russia and Eastern Europe (Online)

This course looks at the development of sports as a substitute and arena for battle between countries, as well as the rise of sports culture more generally in Central and Eastern Europe in terms of nationhood, politics, and corporeality. In this course, students will learn about the history and culture of sports, spectatorship, fandom, the Cold War, and Central and Eastern Europe. Not open to students with credit for SLAVIC 2365.01.

GE Theme: Traditions, Cultures, & Transformations

SLAVIC 3320: Queer Comrades: Sexual Citizenship and LGBTQ Lives in Eastern Europe (Online)

Through the lens of film, literature, theater, and art, this course explores what it means to be a queer citizen of Eastern Europe. Countering ideas of inherent backwardness, which tend to erase the existence of a diverse group of people, we will get to know works of art that bear witness to the wealth of queer experiences in 20th century Eastern Europe.

GE Theme: Citizenship for a Just & Diverse World