The Russian Language and Literature faculty is proposing a new Russian Studies program, tentatively scheduled to launch in fall 2010, to replace the existing RLL program and the interdepartmental program in Russian and Eastern European Studies, announced David Powelstock, chair of the new Russian Studies curriculum committee, at Thursday's faculty meeting.
"If you compare the Russian Studies minor to the old REES minor, they're actually very similar, but the new minor and the new major will both be more flexible in terms of what kinds of courses students can count towards their major," Powelstock said. The requirements will set a maximum number of literature and nonliterature classes that can count for the major in order to keep a balance on how many of such classes can be taken, Powelstock said.


Under the proposal, Profs. Gregory Freeze (HIST) and ChaeRan Freeze (NEJS), who both focus on Russia in their respective departments, will officially join the program as affiliated faculty, according to the new Universitywide affiliation policy established earlier this semester. Powelstock said that German, Russian, and Asian Languages and Literature department chair Robin Feuer Miller had invited the two affiliated faculty members to join.


"[The Russian Studies major and minor] will have a substantial Russian language requirement as the core of everything, but whereas the former RLL major and minor then only allowed Russian literature and culture courses to count as electives, you'll now be able to count things like Prof. [Gregory] Freeze's Russian history sequence," Powelstock said.


The new program would "offer more access points for people who want to get a major degree. What's important to note is that you can still do a degree that's mostly literature. ... There's flexibility within it, so you can make it pretty much a RLL major or you can make it much more of a Russian history major," Powelstock said.


The faculty approved a first reading of the proposal, which was passed by the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee earlier this semester. The proposal will not become final until a second reading at the next faculty meeting, currently scheduled for Feb. 3. The proposal will also need the approval of the Board of Trustees.


Currently, students can major or minor in RLL or minor in REES. Last semester, the Curriculum and Academic Restructuring Steering committee had recommended that the two programs be combined into a "more flexible single interdepartmental program."


Powelstock said the change was an idea the faculty had considered before the recommendation but that the CARS report served as a "stimulus" to draft the proposal. When a representative from the CARS committee originally came to speak to the RLL faculty about the recommendations, their response was, "That sounds great," Powelstock recalled.


"[The change] doesn't have any effect on decreasing or increasing the number of faculty. ... There's now a larger amount of faculty involved in the program, so it just makes it a more robust program," Dean of Arts and Sciences Adam Jaffe said.


"One of several themes that CARS was trying to articulate was that if we make our majors more flexible and broader, then it will make it easier to have them be robust even as we have somewhat fewer faculty," Jaffe said. He added that a similar discussion was under way within the German Language and Literature department. He noted that Italian Studies is already similarly constructed, with classes in Italian art available beyond Italian language classes.


"The REES minor and the RLL minor were sort of in competition with each other, which didn't really make any sense because we run all of them," Powelstock said. He added that most of the RLL majors double major in departments like Politics, History or Near Eastern and Judaic Studies. "So it makes sense for those students that they be able to use Russian history toward the degree that they're getting."


"We think this [new department] might actually increase the number [of majors and minors] because it will make the major more accessible to students whose primary focus isn't Russian Language and Literature," he said. "Often we have people who minor in REES but don't major in RLL even though they've done the hardest part, which is the language, simply because they're interested in doing other Russian-related [courses]."


He said the faculty sought feedback from the department's undergraduate departmental representatives and students who are majors or minors. He said he did not know yet to what extent graduating students could participate in the new program.


Russian Language and Literature UDR Nick Nestelbaum '10 said he often felt that Russian and other language offerings were under threat of being "first on the chopping block. ... That makes it really important that it's marketable to the student body."


"It accommodates the student who isn't entirely sure or who likes everything about certain parts of the country. ... It appears much simpler even though it's in a lot of ways more complex because there are a lot of different components now," Nestelbaum said.