Department of Slavic Languages

Welcome to the Slavic Department!

On our website, you can find out more about our faculty, our students, and our undergraduate and graduate offerings in Russian, Ukrainian, Czech, Polish, and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian languages, literatures, and cultures. Choose a link in the menu to the left, click here for a list of Fall 2017 courses conducted in English with no prerequisites, or check us out on Facebook.

BOOK LAUNCH: "A HISTORY OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE" BY KAHN, LIPOVETSKY, REYFMAN & SANDLER

Please join the Harriman Institute in its celebration of A History of Russian Literature (Oxford University Press, 2018), authored by Andrew Kahn (Oxford), Mark Lipovetsky (Colorado-Boulder, but soon to join the Columbia Slavic Dept.), Irina Reyfman (Columbia) and Stephanie Sandler (Harvard). Published just this past summer, the ground-breaking volume has already garnered glowing reviews: "What Kahn, Lipovetsky, Reyfman and Sandler have managed to encompass and contextualize ... is nothing short of staggering" (Boris Dralyuk, Times Literary Supplement).

All four authors will be present for the Harriman's celebration. In addition, the authors have invited four guests to participate in the discussion of the book's genesis, novel structure, and tremendous scope. The guests are: Polina Barskova (Hampshire College), Caryl Emerson (Princeton), Olga Maiorova (Michigan) and Wes Williams (Oxford).

Friday, October 12, 2018

4:00pm - 6:00pm

Harriman Institute Atrium (12th Floor, International Affairs Building, 420 W 118th St)

Olena Yershova’s Retrospective at Columbia

Exploring Today’s Ukraine through Film

Since its inception 14 years ago, the Ukrainian Film Club of Columbia University has primarily focused on the work of directors and actors. Now , for the first time, we would like to take a closer look at producers, the profession that is relatively new and in the process of defining itself in Ukraine’s contemporary film industry. After all, the old Soviet cinema from whose shadow the post-Soviet Ukrainian film is slowly emerging did not have film producers in the customary sense. Choosing from a dozen possible candidates this semester we showcase Olena Yershova. She comes from a celebrated filmmaking family; her father Kostiantyn Yershov wrote and directed eight films and is primarily celebrated for his screen adaptation of Mykola Hohol’s (Nikolai Gogol) story Viy, arguably the only horror film allowed to be made in the Soviet Union (1967).

Olena Yershova is a successful film producer in her own right with an impressive portfolio of more than ten feature films which garnered over a hundred awards worldwide. Her filmography includes My Joy (main competition at Cannes 2010), Frost (Directors’ Fortnight - Cannes 2017), Falling (Prix Du Public Jeanne Moreau at Premiers Plans, France, 2018), Gogita’s New Life (main competition at IDFA 2016), Motherland (Venice Critics’ Week 2015, Best Script and UNESCO Award nomination at the Asian Pacific Screen Awards 2015) and Blind Dates (Toronto IFF, Tokyo IFF, Palm Springs IFF, Berlinale - Forum, 2014). She has successfully worked not only with Ukrainian, but also, with Georgian and Turkish directors.

The forthcoming retrospective will showcase four feature films produced by Olena Yershova in cooperation with four different directors, three of them representing the new generation of Ukrainian filmmakers. Each film brings into focus an important aspect of the current Ukrainian reality.

For more information about each film, please see the Slavic events calendar.

BOOK TALK. FOX, BY DUBRAVKA UGREŠIĆ WITH TRANSLATOR ELLEN ELIAS-BURSAC

Please join the Njegoš Endowment for Serbian Language and Culture and the Harriman Institute for a book launch and discussion of Dubravka Ugrešić’s recent novel Fox, translated by Ellen Elias-Bursac and David Williams, with the author Dubravka Ugrešić and translator Ellen Elias-Bursac. The conversation will be moderated by Aleksandar Bošković (Columbia).

Tuesday, October 16th, 6:00pm
1219 International Affiars Building (420 W 118th Street)

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