WesMaps - Wesleyan University Catalog 2015-2016       Summer Session       Winter Session       Home       Archive       Search
CS92PROD
Speak, Memory: The Russian Memoir

RUSS 220
Fall 2015
Section: 01  
Crosslisting: REES 220, RULE 220
Certificates: Writing

Memoirs offer a chance for the individual to make sense of his or her relationship to larger historical forces and allow writers of fiction and poetry to reflect on the tensions between biography and the creative process. We will read prison memoirs by Fyodor Dostoevsky and Eugenia Ginzburg; visions of childhood by Lev Tolstoy, Vladimir Nabokov, and poets Osip Mandelstam, Marina Tsvetaeva, and Joseph Brodsky; and works of autobiography by Viktor Shklovsky and Sergey Gandlevsky that create their own poetic world. The course will also consider the theoretical problems of autobiographical writing. Students will write a memoir of childhood (3-5 pages) to better understand the technical problems faced by Tolstoy in writing about his childhood. Students will also write a piece of memoiristic prose, or a parody or imitation of one of the writers in the course (minimum 10 pages), as one of their three papers. We will devote one class session to a writing workshop session on the creative project.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA RUSS
Course Format: Lecture / DiscussionGrading Mode: Student Option
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Requirement for: (REES-MN)(REES-Lang/Lit/C)
Past Enrollment Probability: 75% - 89%

Last Updated on OCT-03-2024
Contact wesmaps@wesleyan.edu to submit comments or suggestions. Please include a url, course title, faculty name or other page reference in your email ? Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459