T H E S E A M Y S I D E O F T H E R U S S I A N S I L V E R A G E
Regular office hours this quarter will be:
- Tuesday, 1:30 - 2:30
- Thursday, 12.30-1.30
Please feel free to email or telephone me to make appointments at other times, or to continue discussions from class. Classes, meetings and library work take me out of my office for a large part of every day, and the department can't afford voice mail for faculty, so email is a more reliable channel than the telephone.
Click on window to close it
Papers: A midterm paper (6 - 8 pages, 40% of course grade) is due on the Monday of Week 6, and a final paper (8 - 10 pages, 50% of grade) on Thursday 14 Dec. You can turn in your papers as email attachments by midnight on the due day, with a hard copy for the midterm at the next class meeting. We'll develop paper topics during class discussions.
For the midterm you will initially be given a provisional grade, that can be improved by some rewriting following discussion of the first draft.
Participation in class discussion counts for the remaining 10% of the course grade.
Click on window to close it
R e a d i n g m a t e r i a l s
Some of the reading material that accompanies this course (see the readings for each week in the schedule) will be distributed as photocopies. The books you need to acquire are:
- Kirsten Lodge (ed.), The Dedalus Book of Russian Decadence, 2007.
- Fyodor Sologub, The Petty Demon, Tr. S. D. Cioran, 2006.
- Vladimir Solovyov, The Meaning of Love, Tr. Thomas Beyer, 1985.
- Max Nordau, Degeneration, Eng. tr 2012.
- Mikhail Kuzmin, Wings, Tr. Hugh Aplin, 2007.
- Mikhail Artsybashev, Sanin, Tr. Michael Katz, 2001.
- Andrei Bely, Petersburg, Tr. Maguire and Malmstad, 1978.
The preferred source for these books is Amazon.com, which often has used as well as new copies available, sometimes at very low prices. They may be available elsewhere, including public as well as the UW libraries. Amazon has everything in this list, and delivers extremely fast. If you have any difficulty finding anything, please let me know. Some other materials will be distributed as photocopies or made availabe online, and I'll be making more suggestions for background reading in the course of the quarter, partly in reponse to your thoughts on paper topics.
Click on this window to close it
1
Valerii Briusov and Fyodor Sologub |
Tuesday |
Briusov: channeling European decadence. |
Thursday |
Sologub: a target for Max Nordau? |
Reading: Briusov & Sologub, poems and stories in The Dedalus Book..., & Sologub, Petty Demon. |
Leonid Andreyev and Aleksandr Blok |
Tuesday |
Andreev: decadent success-story? |
Thursday |
Blok: where to find The Lady Beautiful?
|
Reading: Andreyev and Blok, all material in The Dedalus Book.... |
Aleksandr Kondratiev and Mikhail Kuzmin |
Tuesday |
Aleksandr Kondratiev: the modernization of Classical myth.
|
Thursday |
Mikhail Kuzmin, Wings. |
Reading: Kondratiev stories in The Dedalus Book..., Kuzmin, Wings. |
The ultimate philosophical novel 2.
|
Tuesday |
Petersburg: a symphony of symbols. |
Thursday |
Petersburg: a Gogolian carnival.
|
Reading: Andrei Bely's novel Petersburg. |
Thu 14 Dec |
Final paper due. |
|
What makes a good paper? If you have any doubts about any aspect of your paper, or just want to try out ideas before you commit the time and effort to developing them at length, please feel free to come by and talk about it. Here are the guidelines that will be the basis for grading your term papers.
4.0 - 3.6 The paper shows maturity: thoughtful analysis clearly expressed.
- The title reflects a clear and non-trivial topic, and the organization is logical and coherent: questions are raised, suggested answers are presented through well-connected arguments based on detailed evidence, and conclusions do not overreach either the evidence or the arguments.
- Evidence from the relevant primary texts is not outweighed by opinions drawn from secondary sources, and there are some original insights.
- The writing is good: no grammatical problems, spelling mistakes or sloppy punctuation; sentences are neither too short (leads to repetition of many basic sentence elements, weak connection between ideas and difficulty in constructing an argument) nor too long (points get lost, arguments are hard to follow); vocabulary and style are appropriate for the context.
3.5 - 3.0 The paper is less mature, and doesn't meet the 'A' criteria consistently.
- The title could be fuller or clearer, organization could be tighter, questions clearer, argument more detailed, conclusions more specific.
- Too much reliance on opinions expressed in secondary works, too little direct evidence from the primary texts, few personal insights.
- Some minor problems with grammar, spelling and punctuation, and style, e.g. inappropriate use of slang expressions.
2.9 - 2.5 The basics are there, but there's a lot of room for improvement.
- Topic not clear, organization weak, argument thin or hard to follow, conclusions sweeping, not well supported or not directly relevant to the topic.
- Paper is based on others' opinions (secondary works, class notes or websites), with no analysis of the primary texts and no personal insights.
- Serious writing problems: sentences are poorly constructed and linked, vocabulary is often inappropriate for the context, or gratuitously colloquial.
2.4 - 2.0 The paper reflects very little thought or effort, and is difficult to read.
- Topic poorly defined, and not much clearer by the end of the paper. Organization very weak, and statement takes the place of argument. The paper may be too short, and consist of more 'padding' than substance.
- Little reference to the primary texts, possibly because of difficulty in understanding them, and secondary sources are used to compensate for this.
- Writing is bad enough to make attendance at a writing workshop advisable.
1.9 - 0.7 Writing problems obscure the content of the paper, even if there is one.
- Topic trivial, makes little sense, or is of limited relevance to the course materials. Little or no organization, too little content for there to be a structure.
- Little evidence that the primary texts have been read and understood, and use of secondary sources is paraphrase bordering on plagiarism.
- Writing is bad enough to require remediation at the Freshman Composition level.
Click on page to close window
|
Which browser?
This website makes extensive use of Javascript, and displays best with Internet Explorer*
or Safari. Google Chrome and Opera also display it acceptably, as does Firefox for the PC.
The Mac version of Firefox is chronically bad at rendering Javascript, and does not display
this site acceptably.
* Note however that Version 9 of IE has a known defect that prevents the playing of MP3
files. If you're chained to IE9, we can talk about other options for Week 6 (Music Week).
Clickable Links
Any text that turns red on mouse-over is a clickable link to slides, a document or some
other feature. Text that is already red when the page first displays is red only for
emphasis.
Click to close this alert