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.

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

An original, engaging, and comprehensive chronological narrative of Russian literature from the medieval period to the twenty-first century
Enriched with case studies and keywords throughout
Explores the particular relationship between Russian literature and history
Beautifully illustrated, with a colour plate section and black-and-white halftones

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.

WHAT DO THESE CHRONICLES REALLY MEAN? REVISITING THE LAURENTIAN AND HYPATIAN CHRONICLE ACCOUNTS OF THE RAID OF PRINCE IGOR SVJATOSLAVIČ IN 1185

Thursday, November 1, 2018

4:00pm - 6:00pm

709 Hamilton Hall

Please join the Harriman Institute and the Columbia Department of Slavic Languages for a lecture by Harvey Goldblatt (Yale University).

Alongside his research on these sources of the text of The Lay of Igor, Professor Goldblatt has prepared a new translation of the tale, fragments of which, time willing, he will present and discuss.

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