Fall 2026 Courses

Tu/Th 11:00-12:15 PM (TERM A: 8/24 – 10/16)

Instructor: Prof. Matthew Kendall. 3 hours. CRN: 17672

The world has always had a lot to say about the space we now call Russia. Many of Russia’s claims to fame and infamy have seemed at odds with each other: some saw Russia as a destitute, violent, and barbaric backwater, but many others thought of Russia as the home of first-rate art. While some perceived Russia as a depraved den of political schemes, many thought that it represented a pinnacle of effective governance and royal majesty, and others sensed a revolutionary potential that could re-shape ideas of the state forever. Our course will incorporate short readings (in English!) from Pushkin to Dostoevsky, and we will explore East European religious history, film, painting, architecture, cinema, and dance. Together, we will work to better understand what we mean when we use the word “culture,” and we will learn the history and consequences of how Russia understands its own.

Satisfies World Cultures GenEd requirement.

Counts towards the Russian Studies Major or Minor, & the CEES (Central & Eastern European Studies) Major or Minor.

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Tu/Th 11:00-12:15 PM

Instructor: Prof. Karen Underhill. 3 hours. CRN: 24966

Enter the vibrant and anguished world of 20th-century Polish prose with an introduction to literary works by futurist Aleksander Wat, Auschwitz survivor Tadeusz Borowski, poet and acerbic social critic C.K. Norwid, and modernist innovators Witold Gombrowicz, Bruno Schulz, and Debora Vogel. Join us as we discuss the modern text as both a hardworking machine, and an embodiment of desire. In this course we will ask: What does fiction do, and how does it help us negotiate the world around us? Is storytelling still necessary in a world characterized by speed, the machine, and motion pictures? If so, what does it desire, and what does it promise?

POL 130 is one of our best loved Polish lit courses. Join us to find out why! Our will topics include Positivist, Futurist, avant-garde and neo-Romantic movements in Polish literature; witness literature; and the role of literary theologies that combine sacred and secular. We will read stories that offer escape from the modern world into the worlds of fantasy, absurdity, or nostalgia; and others whose purpose is precisely to prevent escape from the shock and disillusionment of the modern world.

No prerequisites. All texts will be read in English translation, with the option to read in the Polish original.

Taught in English.

Satisfies Creative Arts or World Cultures GenEd requirement.

Counts towards the Polish Studies Major or Minor, & the CEES (Central & Eastern European Studies) Major or Minor.

Tu/Th 9:30-10:45 AM

Instructor: Prof. Giedrius Subacius. 3 hours. CRN: 17548

Lith 115 offers a diversity of insights over the cultural landscape of Lithuania: language, mythology, literature, film, architecture, art, geography, population, emigration, history, resistance, and identity.

We read, watch, and discuss.

All class materials are available online (no textbook).

Satisfies World Cultures GenEd requirement.

Counts towards the CEES (Central & Eastern European Studies) Major or Minor.

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Online Asynchronous

Instructor: Ekaterina Petrenko. 3 hours. CRN: 50698

Through the prism of Russian literature and art, the course explores the various ways in which the human body is socially constructed and imbued with political and aesthetic significance. In particular, the course examines the body as the site of competing desires and interpretations, at the intersection of medical, scientific, and aesthetic discourses. To what extent do medicine, science, politics, and art influence, inform, or clash with each other in their approaches to physicality? The course will discuss such topics as labor efficiency and fatigue, production and reproduction, health and illness, biopolitics and bioethics, and finally, the concepts and experiences of ability, gender, class, and race.

Satisfies World Cultures or Creative Arts GenEd requirement.

Counts towards the Russian Studies Major or Minor, & the CEES (Central & Eastern European Studies) Major or Minor.

Tu/Th 12:30-1:45 PM

Instructor: Prof. Julia Vaingurt. 3 hours. CRN: 50793

What does it mean to live a good life in a world shaped by war, historical cataclysms, and forces beyond our control?

The course invites students on an epic journey into the heart of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, a search for a moral self amid sweeping political and historical upheavals. Following Tolstoy’s characters from glittering ballrooms to brutal battlefields, we will join them in exploring the causes of war, the nature of social bonds, and the extremes of human suffering and love. Along the way, the course examines Tolstoy’s artistic method and philosophy of art, as well as his often-controversial views on the political, social, and religious issues of his time, ideas that sparked debate in his own era and continue to resonate today.

Take this course and find out why Tolstoy’s portrait is hanging in Jane Addams’ Hull-House or how Tolstoy’s ideas of non-violent resistance influenced Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Satisfies Creative Arts GenEd requirement.

Counts towards the Russian Studies Major or Minor, & the CEES (Central & Eastern European Studies) Major or Minor.

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Hybrid Format: In-person Tues 2:00-3:15 PM, remaining material online asynchronous.

Instructor: Prof. Karen Underhill. 3 hours. CRN: 48307

“When I pronounce the word Future,” writes Polish poet Wisława Szymborska, “the first syllable already belongs to the past. / When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it.” Polish poets have been destroying silence and pronouncing the future for close to seven centuries – using the poetic word, rhymed or unrhymed, shouted or whispered – to express the human condition, to resist oppression, and to celebrate freedom.  In this course we will read and discuss Polish poetry in translation, and ask: how is poetry woven into the fabric of our lives – in song lyrics, children’s literature, folk culture, and political activism? Develop your own relationship to the poems we read through a weekly poetry-reading journal. No prerequisites! First-time readers, or experienced poetry writers – all are welcome. The course is a hybrid format: we meet Tuesdays in person; the rest online asynchronous.

Satisfies Creative Arts GenEd requirement.

Counts towards the Polish Studies Major or Minor, & the CEES (Central & Eastern European Studies) Major or Minor.

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Tu/Th 9:30-10:45 AM

Instructor: Aleksandra Khuzina. 3 hours. CRN: 34736. Prerequisite: RUSS 104

Counts towards the Russian Studies Major or Minor, & the CEES (Central & Eastern European Studies) Major or Minor.

M/W 9:30-10:45 AM

Instructor: Kasia Majchrowicz-Wolny. 3 hours. CRN: 50695. Prerequisite: POL 104

Focusing on the linguistic precision required for clinical interactions within diverse communities – such as those in the Chicago area – this course develops advanced Polish communication skills for healthcare settings. Students engage in structured conversations regarding patient intake, medical history, and symptom clarification through a combination of targeted vocabulary development and task-based practice. By moving from classroom fluency toward purposeful real-world application, the curriculum prepares students to navigate complex healthcare and community-oriented professional environments with increased confidence and cultural competency.

Counts towards the Polish Studies Major or Minor, & the CEES (Central & Eastern European Studies) Major or Minor.

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Mon. 3:00-5:30 PM

Instructor: Prof. Michał Paweł Markowski. 4 hours. CRN: 50694

The seminar will explore a wide, interdisciplinary range of topics—including literature, philosophy, economics, and politics—to analyze various figures of the self in the long 19th-century world and their political implications. It will consider significant figures in modern Central and Eastern literature, from Dostoevsky to Witkiewicz, from Gogol to Gombrowicz, from Kafka to Schulz, from Musil to Cioran, to see how Polish, Russian, German, and Romanian literature perform the dialectics of the self and community. Two key dominant perspectives on the self during this period—sovereignty and freedom—will be contrasted with their negative counterparts—submission and subjection—to examine how the will and its absence shape the relationship between individualism and societal forces, and what the political consequences of intellectual choices are. Besides mapping a broad network of intellectual exchanges across cultures and languages, the seminar aims to develop a framework crucial to understanding the concept of the self today.

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Thurs. 3:30-6 PM

Instructor: Prof. Matthew Kendall. 4 hours. CRN: 50699

Mikhail Bakhtin is often called one of the most important and influential literary theorists and philosophers of the 20th century. But until the 1980s, Bakhtin was virtually unknown outside of Russia, even if his life was far from ordinary: he watched the collapse of the Russian empire, witnessed the Bolshevik revolution, endured and survived Stalinism, spent much of his adult life in exile, and even became an amputee at a relatively young age. Despite his utterly singular biography, Bakhtin and his ideas constantly garner mention in scholarly work that navigates situations, objects, and problems that have very little to do with the world he once inhabited. With this paradox in mind, our seminar will pursue two aims. On the one hand, we will read Bakhtin’s writings alongside literary texts that inspired him (Dostoevsky, Rabelais, Turgenev), and we will better situate his ideas about language, power, and political economy within the unique context of the early 20th century Soviet Union. On the other hand, we will use his ideas to analyze creative works and media with which Bakhtin never engaged (Nabokov, Ismailov, Cronenberg, Muratova, and more), and which hail from contexts he may have never imagined. In doing so, we will explore a variety of strategies for re-articulating Bakhtin’s enduring relevance to a wide variety of readers and thinkers today.

All materials will be assigned and taught in English translation.