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Fall 2025 Undergraduate Catalog 
    
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Fall 2025 Undergraduate Catalog

Russian Studies

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Department of Languages and Cultural Studies, College of Arts and Sciences
 
Chair: Sophie Raynard-Leroy
Director of Undergraduate Studies: Kathleen de Riesthal
Coordinator of the Minor: Anna Geisherik, anna.geisherik@stonybrook.edu
Department Administrator: Elizabeth Tolson
 
Office: Humanities 2042
Phone: (631) 632-7440

The minor in Russian Studies is flexible and gives students the opportunity to select a particular area of emphasis. A student who successfully completes a minor in Russian attains a broadly based background in Russian culture; depending on which electives are chosen, the student also acquires a more specialized knowledge of language, literature, or cultural studies. The Department offers courses in Russian as well as in translation, and the Russian minor may be combined with work in other disciplines.

Russian minors have found employment in teaching, government service, foreign trade and banking, communications, translating, and interpreting. The expansion of East-West trade and the new business ventures in Russia seeking cooperation with Europe, Asia, and Africa offer creative career opportunities. Some Russian students have continued on to do graduate work in Russian or Slavic Studies at Yale, Harvard, North western, Berkeley, and American University. Others have become certified as secondary school teachers. Science, social science, and pre-med minors have found the study of Russian to be particularly useful in their careers.

Minor Requirements

All courses offered for the minor must be passed with a letter grade of C or higher.

Completion of the minor requires at least 18 credits, and 9 of the 18 credits must be at the 300 level or above.

Language study (6 credits)

  • All Russian minors must take at least 6 credits of Russian language (RUS) courses. Students without background in Russian language will take introductory Russian, either RUS 111 -RUS 112  (Elementary Russian I and II) or RUS 101  (Intensive Elementary Russian). Those with previous Russian language study, including heritage speakers, must take 6 credits of higher level Russian language courses. Consult the Russian Coordinator for appropriate placement.

Russian-focused electives (12 credits)

  • Two electives selected from HUR courses;
  • Two additional electives can be selected from either HUR or RUS courses not applied toward Language Study. One relevant course from another department (GLI, HIS, HUE, LIN) may be applied as an elective with permission of the Russian Coordinator.

Placement in Language Courses for Incoming Students

The prerequisites for each course indicate which language level the course is geared towards. As a rule of thumb, one year of high-school foreign-language study is considered the equivalent of one semester of study at the college level for non-native speakers. Heritage speakers, by contrast, are placed according to their relative mastery of both the spoken and written language. Students are advised to consult the coordinator of the Russian minor.

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