This course offers a close reading of The Petty Demon (Melkij bes), Fyodor Sologub’s landmark novel of Russian literature at the turn of the twentieth century. Combining literary analysis with historical and cultural context, the course examines the novel’s portrayal of moral decay, provincial life, and psychological disintegration in late-Imperial Russia. The course also situates the novel within broader developments in Russian prose (Pushkin’s Pikovaja Dama, Gogol’s Peterburgskie povesti and Revizor, Dostoevsky’s Besy, Chekhov's Chelovek v futljare).

• Level: A good command of Russian is required: the course is taught entirely in Russian and includes interactive discussion in Russian.
• Requirements: The texts have to be read in advance.
• Materials: All the required texts can be downloaded here.

This course is devoted to the late poetry of Anna Akhmatova, with particular emphasis on Requiem, one of the central poetic testimonies of Stalinist terror.

• Level: A good command of Russian is required: the course is taught entirely in Russian and includes interactive discussion in Russian.
• Requirements: The texts have to be read in advance.
• Materials: A link to the required texts will be published here in March.