Contemporary Russian Literature

Andrey Dmitrievich Stepanov

Educational designer and academic advisor of the program "Contemporary Russian Literature"

Doctor of Letters, Ph.D, Chair Professor of the Department of History of Russian Literature of the Philological Faculty of SPbU, critic, translator, prose writer.

The author of the monography "Issues of Communication in Chekhov’s Works" (2005), more than 170 scientific articles, two novels and a short story collection, as well as twenty books of literary and scientific translations from English (D. Defoe, E. Gaskell, A. Munro, E.R. Burroughs, D.du Maurier, A. Schönle, S. Conrad). The NOS Annual Literature Prize winner (2009), the N.V. Gogol Prize winner (2011).

The program acquaints students with the state of contemporary Russian literature, the history of its formation in the late Soviet years and 1990s, the main swims in the prose of the two-thousands and the twenty-tens, the works by the most famous writers, such as Zakhar Prilepin, Roman Senchin, Vladimir Sorokin, Victor Pelevin, Boris Akunin, Tatiana Tolstaya, and many others.

As part of the program, the contemporary Russian literary process is described and interpreted. This process does not yet have stable forms of conceptualization (educational programs for institutions, textbooks, tutorials, etc.) and is not so often a subject of consideration even of specialized university programs.

The program is implemented in English, the language of international communication, which makes the potential target audience international in the strict sense of the word.

The program is dedicated to the newest literary process, and therefore may be interesting to not only a foreign trainee or professional philologist, but also everyone who is interested in Russian literature and culture.

Upon completion of the program, students will:
- have an idea of the Russian literary process in the late XX – early XXI centuries, their connections with historical events and the culture of the period;
- learn to use scientific, reference, educational, and methodological literature;
- understand and present literary information;
- master the basic terminological apparatus of contemporary literary studies;
- be able to analyze a literary text.

Thanks to the program, students will get acquainted with contemporary Russian culture: learn to better understand the Russian mentality, find it easier to communicate with the Russians, compare the tendencies of the culture and literature of their home country with Russian culture and literature.