This graduate seminar will consider major trends, concepts, texts, people, and institutions of Russian Realism. Texts/topics include: the concept of Realism in literary history and literary scholarship; the beginnings of the realist aesthetics in literary ethnography (fiziologicheskii ocherk and “Zapiski okhotnika”); the rise of realism from personal documents and criticism (Belinsky); the institution of the “thick journals”; realism in poetry (Nekrasov); Goncharov’s Oblomov; Turgenev’s Otsy i deti; Chernyshevsky’s What Is to Be Done?; and approaches to Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

All primary texts are read in Russian; discussions in English.

Requirements: Reading and class participation; paper or take-home final examination.

Prerequisite: solid Russian; graduate standing (or consent of instructor).

Books: all texts will be reserved in the Slavic Department Library.