Announcing Teen Online Course for 2020-2021: 19th Century Russian Short Fiction

Pushkin “The Queen of Spades” by Ulyanov, 1908

Designed for teens who love literature and writing, this online course will introduce students to the amazing world of Russian fiction of the 19th century. We will read and discuss some of the most celebrated and overlooked short masterpieces by major Russian writers, including Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, and Turgenev in the first semester in the fall of 2020, and Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov in the second semester during winter and spring of 2021.

Our class will focus on close textual analysis of the material read at home, supplemented by biographical, historical, and critical information introduced at each online session. I will draw upon my Russian background to provide the students with a unique opportunity to appreciate some of the pleasures of the original Russian versions that are inevitably lost in any translation.

Prerequisites include the completion of honors-level high school English and History classes or AP English Composition. Students are expected to have experience writing essays. While I will encourage students to develop their ideas and style and to improve their skills in writing about literature, the course is intended neither to be an introduction to English composition nor to literary analysis.

The first semester will begin in September of 2020 and end in December. The second semester will begin in January of 2021 and end in April. Please click here for the complete course description, including the reading list, assignments, grading criteria, and tuition.