Faculty in CREECA are offering some amazing courses in Summer and Fall 2025! Scroll down for details.
For a full list of REECAS courses, please click on the links below.
REECAS Course: Fall 2025
Summer 2025: Russian Language Courses
Enroll in Summer Russian Classes at UW-Madison!
The University of Wisconsin-Madison offers intensive Russian courses designed to help students rapidly advance their language proficiency and learn about Russian-speaking cultures. Students learn Russian in an accelerated format, covering an entire academic year in eight weeks! Russian is considered a critical language by the U.S. government and opens up unique opportunities for career and personal development. To learn more, contact Dr. Anna Tumarkin (atumarki@wisc.edu).
Levels Offered:
- Intensive First-Year Russian (Slavic 101-102)
- Intensive Second-Year Russian (Slavic 117-118)
Program Dates: June 16 – August 10
Days and Times: Monday-Friday @8:50am – 10:45am and 12:05pm – 2:10pm
Summer 2025: ART HISTORY 403 – Discover Eastern European Art
Course Description: This comprehensive introduction to the art and architecture of the Slavic regions of Eastern Europe will fill a significant void in your knowledge of world art. Besides covering a broad spectrum of artistic developments, this course will help you find answers to highly relevant questions of contemporary politics today. Is there a continuity in the architecture of Rus’? How is the artistic legacy of Medieval Rus’ interpreted today in Russia and Ukraine? Is the art of Medieval Rus’ Byzantine art? Is the whole idea of “Byzantine Commonwealth” just a myth? We’ll critically analyze all of these concepts.
This course is an immersive and epic adventure in what had been missing from your curriculum so far: Art and Architecture of Eastern Europe! In 8 weeks, we will travel from the charming wooden architecture of the Russian North to the Byzantine-inspired churches in Kyiv; from the sturdy white stone churches of Vladimir-Suzdal to the iconic onion domes and glitter of Muscovy. We will be analyzing architecture, paintings, mosaics throughout the beautiful Balkan peninsula and enter into the world of Serbian despots. We will enter magnificent ballrooms, palaces that whisper conspiracies, a room entirely covered with amber (!) and witness the imperial splendor and luxury of Catherine the Great. Finally, we will feel the revolutionary energy of the avant-garde Ballets Russes!
Prerequisite: Sophomore Standing
Course meeting days and times: Asynchronous online. 8 weeks. June 16 – Aug 10, 2025
Credits: 3 credits. Counts as L&S credits, Humanities Breath
Fall 2025: LAW 940 – Russian Law
Course Description: Russia is often dismissed as a lawless country. The reality is considerably more complicated. In this course, we will explore both the law on the books and how Russians actually experience law. We will begin by studying the trajectory of the underlying legal system from a civil law tradition to embracing socialist law for much of the 20th century and to transitioning to a present-day system that incorporates elements from civil law, common law, and socialist law. We will read ethnographies of the legal system and memoirs of practitioners from various periods. We will also make use of relevant novels, short stories, documentaries, and narrative films. Our focus will include analyses of both the everyday law experienced by ordinary citizens as well as high-profile politicized cases. Students will work with the instructor to develop research topics and will present their findings to the class in written and oral form. No prior knowledge of, or coursework relating to, Russia is required to take the class. Nor is any background in law required.
Prerequisite: Declared in Law JD. Non-law students interested in taking the class should contact Professor Hendley (khendley@wisc.edu).
Course meeting days and times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 1:10-2:30 PM, Law Building 2266
Credits: 3 credits. 50% Graduate Coursework Requirement. Repeatable for Credit.
Course Description: This reading seminar will introduce graduate students to the comparative and transnational history of 20thcentury Europe, with a focus on the Soviet Union and France. We will explore the imprint of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, the Great Depression, the rise of Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, decolonization, Cold War conflict, and the extension of Soviet power on the countries of Europe. The class will alternate between two methodological approaches to the material:
(1) The majority of weeks, we will adopt a comparative approach, exploring a common theme (e.g., socialism, national identity, empire-building, the politics of religion, immigration and displacement, reproductive politics, environmentalism) across two different national/imperial contexts. On these weeks, we will read the history and historiography of the Soviet case against the history and historiography of the French case –- and vice versa.
(2) Intermittently, we will instead adopt a transnational approach, exploring historical entanglements between France and the USSR and considering recent literature on diasporic actors, internationalist visions, and east-west vectors of exchange in order to track the transmission of ideas, culture, political formations, and people across European borders. We will end with an evaluation of the new political, social, and cultural transfigurations that emerged in Europe in the wake of the Revolutions of 1989.
Prerequisite: Graduate/Professional Standing
Course meeting days and times: Tuesdays 1:20 – 3:15, 5255 Mosse Humanities Building
Credits: 2-3 credits.
Fall 2025: ED POL 780 – Decolonial Theories, Methodologies, and Praxis
Course Description: This interdisciplinary course critically examines colonial logics of power and knowledge production, and explores alternative forms of knowing, being, and becoming. The course explores the foundational texts and key debates in the decolonial turn in the social sciences. It engages with critiques of modernity/coloniality and pursuits of decolonization through a conversation between decolonial, postcolonial, feminist, postsocialist, and postcommunist intellectual traditions. Students will engage with decolonial theories and explore methodological approaches rooted in non-Western epistemologies. Through critical analysis and praxis, students will envision alternative futures and pluriversal designs.
Prerequisite: Graduate Standing
Course meeting days and times: Wednesdays 2:25 – 5:25, L155 Education Building
Credits: 3 credits.
Fall 2025: GER/JEWISH/LITTRANS 269 – Yiddish Literature and Culture in Europe
Course Description: In the American cultural imagination, European Jewish life and the history of Yiddish culture is often represented by the image of Jewish men. What happens to that image when women’s stories and women’s legacies are placed at the center? The following course introduces students to classic and lesser-known works of the Yiddish literature and culture that take as their central concern the gendered experience of modern Jewish life.
Covering material from the seventeenth century until today, we will explore a variety of texts, including memoirs, prayers, short stories, poetry, and visual art produced in Yiddish—a language that has been both praised and derided as mame-loshn, or “mother tongue.” The course texts will also familiarize students with major historical events of European Jewish history, including messianic movements; the Jewish Enlightenment; the rise of Jewish nationalism, socialism, and communism; and the Holocaust. The course also investigates the legacy of these works for contemporary theorists of Jewish culture and gender.
This course presumes no previous knowledge of Yiddish literature or language, or Jewish cultural literacy.
Prerequisite: None
Course meeting days and times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 11:00 AM-12:15 PM, 224 Ingraham Hall
Credits: 3 credits. Counts as L&S credits, Literature Breath
Photo Source: https://encyclopedia.yivo.org/media/545
Fall 2025: GNS/JEWISH 105 – First Semester Yiddish
Course Description: Introduction to the Yiddish language through speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Emphasis on communication with attention to cultural and historical context.
Prerequisite: None
Course meeting days and times: MTWR 8:50-9:40 PM, 1510 Microbial Sciences
Credits: 4 credits. Counts as L&S credits.
Photo Source: https://encyclopedia.yivo.org/media/1158
Fall 2025: SLAVIC/LITTRANS 238 – Literature and Revolution
Course Description: Take a literary journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow, following the shifting cultural and political currents in Russia from the years preceding the 1917 Revolution to the rise of Stalinism in the 1930s. Topics in translation will include: revolutionary violence and terror, civil war and emigration, Futurism and the birth of Russian avant-garde art, Soviet feminism and the engineering of the “New Man,” technological utopias and totalitarian dystopias, literature and early Soviet economic policy.
Prerequisite: None
Course meeting days and times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 1:00-2:15 PM, Animal Sciences Building 209
Credits: 3 credits. Counts as L&S credits, Literature Breath
Fall 2025: SLAVIC/LITTRANS 259 –Adventure in Literature and Film
Course Description: How do we define adventure? Who gets to experience it? What role does it play in modern culture? What do adventure stories tell us about our values and changing attitudes to risk and violence? We will address these and similar questions on our intellectual journey through some of the most iconic adventures in Western cultural tradition, from The Odyssey to Indiana Jones, and beyond.
Prerequisite: None
Course meeting days and times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 1:00-2:15 PM, Sewell Social Sciences Building 5106
Credits: 3 credits. Counts as L&S credits, Literature Breath
Fall 2025: SLAVIC/LITTRANS 215 – Love and Death: Introduction to Polish Literature & Culture
Course Description: Examines major traditions, narratives, and ideas that have shaped Polish literature and culture from their beginnings to World War II. Gain broad and contextualized knowledge of Polish civilization by closely reading and analyzing literary and cultural texts in their historical context. Course contents are organized into four major paradigms: Christianity, Sarmatism, Romanticism, and Modernity.
Prerequisite: None
Course meeting days and times: Tuesdays & Thursdays 1:00-2:15 PM, Van Hise Hall 574
Credits: 3 credits. Counts as L&S credits, Literature Breath