Using activities, poetry readings, music videos, film, and internet clips, begin exploring Russian grammar, pronunciation, and basic conversation. Classroom discussion will be supplemented with Russian-language cultural materials.
What You’ll Study in the Bachelor’s Degree in Russian
Build your Russian language skills while developing a critical appreciation of Russia’s diverse literary and cultural traditions with a Russian major at Reed College. Study the history of Russian literature, practice conversation with native speakers, and enrich your knowledge with Eastern European Jewish studies and Soviet and post-Soviet cultural materials from Ukraine, Central Asia, and diasporic communities.
Roadmap to the BA in Russian at Reed
Build a foundation for fluency in Russian through weekly conversations and analysis of Russian poetry and cultural texts as a Russian major at Reed College. In your upper-division courses, dive deeper into Russian literature and media while continuing formal language training. Complete your academic journey with an original thesis topic utilizing research materials in Russian.
Year 1
Set the Foundation
Begin your journey with introductory language courses, which are taught in Russian and offer additional opportunities to practice through a peer-tutoring program and weekly conversations with a native speaker.
Strengthen your language skills and cultural appreciation by participating in events at the Russian House, which serves as both a residence hall for sophomores and above and a cultural center.
Join fellow first-year students in Reed’s signature Humanities 110 course, in which you will study human history, religion, art, and culture and how it all weaves together and impacts the present.
Year 2
Consolidate Your Skills
Continue your study of grammar and consolidate your language skills with reading, discussion, and written commentary on Russian lyrical poetry and texts on Russian cultural history. Move through literature offerings, organized by period and genre, that survey the development of Russian poetry and prose from the Middle Ages to the present. Practice your Russian by applying to live in the Russian House, where you will be immersed in language study with fellow students.
Consider applying for the Jane Burbank fellowship, which helps fund, fully or partially, Reed students’ summer study of Russian and other languages of the former USSR.
Year 3
Deepen Your Knowledge
Analyze works of literature, film, and other media, while furthering your formal language training. Enroll in seminars on specialized topics in Russian politics, media, art, theory, and more. Embark on an independent study to supplement your learning with a topic that interests you.
Take your junior qualifying examination to ensure you have the linguistic preparedness to undertake your yearlong senior thesis project.
Year 4
Present and Defend Your Senior Thesis
Conduct research with materials in the original Russian and write a thesis that showcases your advanced language competence as well as your analytical and interpretive skills. At the end of the writing process, you’ll present, discuss, and defend your original and well-informed work.
Why pursue Russian at Reed College?
Cover the History of Russian Literature
A unique feature of the Russian program at Reed is a sequence of three courses that together cover the history of Russian literature from the Middle Ages to the present. As you study alongside your talented peers and distinguished professors, you’ll develop a critical appreciation of Russia’s diverse literary and cultural traditions.
Supplement your Language Learning
Reed’s Russian department offers many opportunities to practice Russian speaking, writing, and reading, including drills in the language lab, conversation with native speakers, and language immersion and cultural events in the Russian house. You will also learn about communities beyond the bounds of modern Russia. For example, a unique dimension of the Reed program in Russian is represented by offerings in the literature, film, and theatre of East and Central European Jews.
Our Russian Courses
Russian 111
First-Year Russian I
Russian 266
Russian Short Fiction
Reading short stories and novellas by such nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first-century writers as Karamzin, Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Teffi, Babel, Nabokov, and Tolstaya. Engage in dialogue with classmates as you take a critical approach to these readings. Conducted in English and intended for lower-division students.
Russian 388
From Lenin to Putin: Soviet Experience and its Aftermath through Film, Literature, and Human Document
Take an interdisciplinary approach to Russian history by studying films, works of literature, diaries and memoirs, while looking for reflections of Soviet and post-Soviet people’s experience and subjectivity. Survey main social, cultural, and political developments in post-Soviet Russia. Conducted in English.
Careers for Russian Majors
Reed’s Russian graduates have gone on to enroll in top MA and PhD programs in Russian and Slavic studies, Jewish studies, and comparative literature, and to pursue successful careers in the fields of diplomacy, law, translation and interpretation, business, technology, education, and the arts. Here is a sampling:
- Associate professor of Russian, Amherst College
- Lead paralegal, Del Olmo Law PC
- US retail marketing specialist, Intel
- Behavioral research officer, Magenta
- Filmmaker/director, Liminal Films LLC
- Cofounder, Switchboard
- Master’s student, NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development
Notable Fulbrights
Numerous Reed Russian majors have won Fulbright grants. Here are a few:
- Timmy Straw ‘18 (Russian) was selected as a Fulbright Fellow to Russia, where they researched contemporary poetry in Moscow.
- Isabel Meigs ’16 (Russian) traveled to Ukraine to serve as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant.
- Madeline Kinkel ’14 (Russian) won a Fulbright to teach English in Azerbaijan.
- Auden Lincoln-Vogel ’13 (Russian/Art) served as a Fulbright Scholar in Estonia, working on a narrative animation project.
Our Russian Faculty
The members of Reed’s Russian faculty bring a diverse set of interests and specialties, including Russian symbolism, the semiotics of Soviet culture, gender and sexuality in Russian culture, minority and transnational writing in Russian, Central Asian studies, Russian-Jewish literature and culture, Soviet poetry, and poetics and cinema studies.
