About
🇺🇦 The Department of German & Russian Studies stands with Ukraine.
Contemporary central and eastern Europe consists of heterogeneous societies with contested cultural traditions. Offerings in the Department of German and Russian Studies investigate important interconnections among history, society, culture, and language in the region. The curricula in German and Russian explore societies challenged and invigorated by change and stress the importance of attaining fluency not only in the language but also in the nuances of cultural understanding.
The department offers a German Major, a German Minor, and a Russian Minor. The department also contributes to the European Studies Major and Minor.
Incoming students with previous knowledge of German should complete the German Language Placement Questionnaire on the departmental website to determine the appropriate German course to take.
Incoming students with previous knowledge of Russian should complete the Russian Language Placement Questionnaire on the departmental website to determine the appropriate Russian course to take.
Entering students are assigned to the appropriate level in language courses according to relative proficiency based on length of previous study and/or their performance on the Advanced Placement Test of the College Entrance Examination Board taken in high school.
We are delighted to announce that Bates students can now study Russian abroad in Latvia. “Learn Russian in the EU” is offered by Daugavpils University, the foremost academic and research institution in Eastern Latvia, located in Daugavpils, Latvia’s second-largest city and the largest Russian-speaking city in the European Union and NATO. “Learn Russian in the EU” provides a broad range of study programs in the Russian language, literature, culture, history, political science, Eastern European studies, and other areas.
Please talk with your Russian professor about your study abroad options.
Spotlight on Our Courses:
WINTER SEMESTER ’24:
RUSS/EUS 247 Contemporary Russia on Film
The course engages students with Putin’s Russia through cinema and discusses a European culture, which is at the same time non-Western in its political makeup. Topics discussed include: the colonial center and its contemporary political and cultural ambitions, imperial periphery and Russia’s “quiet others,” the Russian Idea in New Auteurism, Putin’s blockbusters, Russia’s alterities (minorities, sexualities, taboo Russia), Global Russia (the United States, Europe, Russia, and Ukraine).
Instructor: Marina Filipovic
Language: English
FALL SEMESTER ’24:
RUSS/EUS/HIST 27x. Russian Myths and Legends
The course analyzes many aspects of Russian folk and popular culture from pre-Christian to post-Soviet Russia, and how folklore continues to influence contemporary Russian culture. The first part of the course concentrates on Russian folk belief as expressed through oral lore, visual arts, and music. The second part of the course focuses on the myth and folktale in the Soviet Union. The course concludes with the uses of folklore in Putin’s Russia and the interaction between the forms of traditional folklore and modern popular culture.
Instructor: Marina Filipovic
Language: English
FALL SEMESTER ’24:
EU/RU 112. Gangsters and Gulags: Crime in Russia and Eastern Europe
This course explores the history and shifting contexts of crime and punishment in Russia and Eastern Europe from the nineteenth century to the present. Central questions for the course include how crimes against the state, against property, and against individuals differ; how gender, religious, and ethnic identities impact ideas about criminality; and how legality and morality are related. As students explore literary texts, first-person narratives, films, and other media depicting crime and criminals, they discuss what kinds of norms and values are reinforced or undermined by ideas and actions surrounding crime.
Instructor: Cheryl Stephenson
Language: English
EU/GR 254. Berlin and Vienna, 1900–1914
From the beginning of the twentieth century to the outbreak of World War I, the capital cities of Berlin and Vienna were home to major political and cultural developments, including diverse modernist movements in art, architecture, literature, and music. The ascending German Empire and the multiethnic Habsburg Empire teetering on the verge of collapse provide the context within which this course examines important texts of the time, as well as narratives created during and after WW1 that take a look back at the last decades of both empires.
Instructors: Raluca Cernahoschi and Jakub Kazecki
Language: English
GER 262. The Split Screen: Reconstructing National Identities in West and East German Cinema
The course will introduce you to the turbulent history of Germany and its people in the 20th and 21st centuries through the medium of film. The selection of films focuses on the Nazi past and the consequences of the lost war, stories of divided Germany created on both sides of the border, and productions that portray the reunification of Germany in the 1990s and the processes of European integration in the 2000s.
Instructor: Jakub Kazecki Language: English
GER 341. Landscapes and Cityscapes in German Media
This course examines the construction of space in a variety of historical and contemporary German media, answering questions such as: What landscapes and cityscapes contribute to German identity and how? How do geographical location, cultural particularity, and historical context contribute to (sometimes contested) discourses on these spaces? And how have German speakers conceptualized and colonized “other” spaces in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas?
Instructor: Jakub Kazecki
Language: German