Cezannism, Neo-Primitivism, Rayonism, Expressionism, Suprematism, Constructivism...! These are just a few of the strange and wonderful art movements that swept through Russia in the early 20th century. Around 1890, the country's leading artists left Realism in the dust to tackle abstraction, non-objectivity, and non-mimetic representation instead — yet forty years later, Socialist Realism reared its head, and avant-garde art disappeared, ceding to kitschy propaganda paintings. How did this happen? Take this class to find out!

What does an editor do? Why does a writer need an editor? In this class, we'll learn the basics of editing: how to clean up a sentence, how to reshape a piece, how to preserve the author's voice. This will be a collaborative effort, so students should be prepared to participate and make their own suggestions!

Metafiction, simply put, is writing about writing--for example, a book that talks about reading a book! In this class, we'll look at two classic examples of metafictional literature, Don Quixote and Madame Bovary, and see how they portray reading--and its consequences--as seductive, dangerous, and powerful.

How do we translate? How do we account for the gaps and cracks between various languages? And how do we evaluate different translations? In this class, we'll discuss and analyze a few questions essential to translation theory. We'll cover the sacred and the profane, the comic and the tragic. Excerpted readings will include Benjamin, Schleiermacher, and Nabokov.

In this seminar, we'll read and discuss a short story and an essay. We'll talk about voice, rhythm, and structure. We'll think about successful literary devices and less successful literary devices. Students should feel comfortable making honest, irreverent comments: all art is subject to revision and interpretation. We'll explore how fiction and nonfiction intersect and how they diverge.

Why do we read? Is literature "useful"? Are some books better than others? By working on a close reading of a canonical passage (or several close readings of several canonical passages), we'll consider the very nature and purpose of literature in the modern world. The unseasoned reader shouldn't hesitate to enroll!