Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center

REEEC at Illinois

The Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center is home to a wide variety of programs for members of the university community and the general public designed to expand understanding of and promote knowledge about Russia, and the countries of Eastern and Central Europe, the Balkans, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. REEEC receives major support for programming  and FLAS fellowships through the U.S. Department of Education through its Title VI program, for which REEEC serves as a designated National Resource Center.

Block Reference

Featured News

Block Reference
jared

M.A. REEES Student Spotlight: Jared Meunier

Jared Meunier is a first-year master's student in REEES at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Jared graduated with a degree in Anthropology from Indiana University - Indianapolis. After graduating, he taught English with the Peace Corps in Ukraine from 2018 through 2020. He also taught English for six months in Qarshi, Uzbekistan. He has also spent time in Omalo, Georgia, and Tumanyan, Armenia, for artist residencies. He is working as a REEEC Liaison to the HEAT lab developed by Dr. Judith Pintar. He also assists Dr. Maureen Marshall with UIUC's South Caucasus...

Block Reference

More News

Russia and Black America

RUSS 122: Russia and Black America

This course explores the Russian-sourced cultural transfers that influenced the Black American experience; and examines the impact of that experience on people and events in Russia. Who were the Black artists, activists, and adventurers who lived and worked there, and what did they discover? A New York bellhop becomes a millionaire in tsarist Moscow; a Ford Motor Company worker spends four decades as a captive of the Soviet regime; a child actor grows up to win fame as a cult poet; and a young female writer witnesses the decline of Soviet communism as she dodges and outwits the KGB All materials are in English. Same as CWL 122 / AFRO 122, fulfills the General Education requirement for US Minority Cultures.

Learn more

Ukrainian Literature

UKR 498: Problems in Ukrainian Lit.

Critical survey of major works in Ukrainian literature from the beginnings to the modern period in light of their historical and cultural background; lectures and readings in English. This course focuses on major works in Ukrainian literature of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, emphasizing its multi-national and multi-cultural dimensions. Among the authors included in the readings are Lesia Ukrainka, Olha Kobylianska, Pavlo Tychyna, Mykola Khvyliovyi, Isaac Babel, Leib Kvitko, Iryna Vilde, Oleksandr Dovzhenko, Yurii Andrukhovych, Oksana Zabuzhko, and Askold Melnychuk. The contemporary war literature of Ukraine is a major topic and includes works by Serhii Zhadan, Stanislav Aseyev, Halyna Kruk, and Marianna Kiyanovska. The main theoretical concepts of the course include modernism, socialist realism, postmodernism, postcolonialism, decolonization, identity, trauma, and resistance. All texts available in English.

Learn more

Bandurist Samiylo Yasnij

SLAV 525: Problems in Slavic Literature - Slavic Folklore

Selected subjects in Russian and Slavic prose, poetry, drama, and literary criticism. Topics vary. Slavic Folklore - This course covers major genres of folk songs and prose connected to calendar and life rituals, folk beliefs, and entertainment in Slavic cultures, along with significant analytical and theoretical approaches to their study. Students will read folkloric texts in the original for Slavic languages they know and in translation for others.

Learn more

Figure #1. Stability

REES 496: Contemporary Autocracy in Theory, Law and Practice

Contemporary Autocracy in Theory, Law, and Practice Based on case studies from Russia, Eastern Europe, and Eurasia, this class explores contemporary legal, media, and political practices used by autocratic actors to assert their power. The course analyzes the impact of these practices on the rule of law, human rights and freedoms, sustainable development, and democracy in general, both in the region and globally. It provides a historical overview of the development of autocratic practices, an introduction to its scholarly analysis using concepts from law, philosophy, and politics, and an investigation of specific contemporary examples. The course will be delivered in a seminar format. There are no prerequisites, although familiarity with political context in the region is helpful. The featured image is a photograph of the installation "Figure #1. Stability" by Tima Radya, a Russian artist from Ekaterinburg, made in 2012. More information about the art installation can be found here: https://stability.t-radya.com/

Learn more

Battleship Potemkin

RUSS 219: Soviet/Russian Film - Propaganda and Alterity

Survey of Russian and Soviet film, from Eisenstein to the present. Weekly film screenings. The course focuses on propaganda and cinematic representation of the Other (regarding race, class, and gender) in Soviet and Russian film tradition. You will analyze the mechanisms of propaganda and see how it works by depicting "good" and "evil" and how it changes with a new political agenda of the Soviet/Russian state. You will broaden your knowledge of the main historical events in Russia during the 20th and 21st centuries. During class discussions, you will compare the Western paradigms of propaganda and alterity to Soviet and post-Soviet. Upon completing the course, you will learn about prominent film directors and the major masterpieces of Soviet and post-Soviet cinema of the 20th century. During the course, we will analyze how the major historical events were represented on the screen and what message they delivered to the audience. No knowledge of Russian required. No class prerequisites.

Learn more

REEES Bibliography

IS 461: Russian, East European, and Eurasian Bibliography & Research Methods

With a focus on Russia, Eastern Europe, and Eurasia, students will investigate this fascinating part of the world, how it has been studied and represented by generations of scholars, scientists, writers, artists, government officials, and others, and how the many fruits of their labors are (or are not) accessible to us today. This course is intended to provide all necessary tools for the conduct of effective research in the field of Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies for both scholars and librarians. Relying on the rich bibliographic tradition of Russia, Central Asia, the Caucasus and Eastern Europe, the latest techniques, strategies, databases and full-text options will be explored and explained. Topics include national bibliography, archival materials, émigré publications, rare books, open-Web resources, citation management tools, and web archiving, with particular emphasis on the transliteration systems, abbreviations, bibliographic and cataloging conventions, and constant troubleshooting that are essential to efficient REEES research. Attention is also paid to information architecture in general and the ways that historical, political, intellectual and technological phenomena affect access to published and unpublished research materials.

Learn more