Sample Courses

Students may select courses from a variety of disciplines. Some courses, whose subject matter may encompass more than only Russian and Eastern European Studies (REES)-related issues, require the consent of both the course professor and the REES advisor in order to be counted toward the minor. The list below is not meant to be comprehensive. Students who have questions about whether a course at Holy Cross or one taken abroad could count towards a REES degree are encouraged to contact either the REES advisor or the director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies.

Select Course List

Foreign Language

RUSS 101-302+/ GERM 101-302+

History*

HIST 101 – Competing Visions of Europe
HIST 101 – WW2 and Holocaust
HIST 245 – Imperial Russia: Between East and West
HIST 253 – Soviet Experiment
HIST 254 – The Soviet Union After Stalin
HIST 255 - Europe in an Age of Mass Politics and Total War
HIST 256 – Europe and Superpowers, 1939-1991
HIST 261 – Germany in the Age of Nationalism
HIST 262 – Germany Between Dictatorship and Democracy
HIST 327 – Cultures of Cold War
HIST 329 – Collapse of Communism
HIST 361 – Germans, Jews and Memory

*Students are encouraged to check course listings each semester for relevant HIST 299 courses and for 401 seminars, whose topics change year to year.

Political Science*

POLS 252 – The Politics of Post-Communism
POLS 265 – European Politics
POLS 266 - European Political Parties
POLS 288 – Politics of Globalization (with consent)
POLS 290 – National Security Policy (with consent)
POLS 316 – Nietzsche and Modernity

*Students are encouraged to check course listings each semester for relevant POLS 299 courses, offered on a one-time basis, but which have in the past included topics on National Security and Global Diplomacy.

Russian Literature and Culture*

RUSS 250 -  Madness in Russian Literature
RUSS 251 – Tales of Desire
RUSS 253 – Fire and Ice: Siberia in Fiction
RUSS 257 – Russian Drama and the West
RUSS 258 – Russian Cinema
RUSS 259 – Fairytale: Russia and the World
RUSS 260 – 19th Century Russian Literature
RUSS 261 – 20th and 21st Century Russian Literature
RUSS 263 – Soviet Art and Literature
RUSS 264 – Writing Under Stalin
RUSS 265 – Roots of Russia

*Students may count any 299 courses, offered on a one-time basis every semester.

German Literature and Culture*

GERM 250 – Metropolis Berlin

*German Studies frequently offers classes in English on German literature and culture. These will have 299 or 399 course numbers, as the topics change year to year.

Economics

ECON 210: Economics of European Union
ECON 221 – Economic Development of Modern China (with consent)
ECON 309: Comparative Economic Systems
ECON 316 – Topics in Conflict Economics (with consent)
ECON 320 – History of Economic Thought (with consent)

Other

CISS 392 - The Holocaust
MUSIC 265 – Music of the 20th Century (with consent)
MUSIC 284 – Beethoven and His World (with consent)
PHIL 224 – Contemporary Continental Philosophy (with consent)
PHIL 241 -- Modern Philosophy (with consent)
PHIL 248 -- Existentialism (with consent)
PSYC 314 – Science, Medicine and the Holocaust
RELS 327 – Holocaust: Confronting Evil
SOCL 383 – Utopian and Dystopian Worlds (with consent)
VAHI 209 – Art in the Modern World, 1780-1940 (with consent)
VAHI 210 – Contemporary Art, 1940-present (with consent)

Putting Together a Plan of Study

These courses can be combined in various ways. One goal of this minor is to enable you to trace certain themes across seminars and, ideally, across disciplines. Many topics — the power of nationalism, the emergence of terrorism, the evolution from dictatorship to democracy or from democracy to dictatorship, tensions between individual freedoms and social obligations, or the role of art in revolution just to name a few — can run through courses focusing on different countries and time periods ranging from the 19th to the 20th to the 21st centuries.

At the same time, in REES, you have the opportunity, should you wish, to also look at the music, art, politics, literature, and history of a single region, or even of a single region at a particular time.  

In putting together your REES application, you will be asked to elaborate on some of the ways you see your courses fitting together, or on some of the issues they have, in combination, allowed you to explore.