Overview

The Russian Studies program is suspended according to ODHE and HLC standards.


Luce Language Labs and Global Cafe

Luce Residential Hall houses five language suites (Chinese, French, German, Spanish & Russian), which provide students with a living/learning environment focused on developing foreign language skills.

The Global Cafe, located in the lower level of Luce, is a place for socializing, learning about other cultures, and enjoying the company of other language learners.

Learn more about Luce Hall Our Statement in Support of Ukraine (Feb. 28, 2022)

Faculty & Staff

Cynthia D. Bernardy

Cynthia D. Bernardy

Academic Administrative Coordinator for Chinese Studies, Classical Studies, English, French & Francophone Studies, German Studies, Russian Studies, and Spanish

cbernardy@wooster.edu

Mareike Herrmann

Mareike Herrmann

Professor and Department Chair of German and Russian Studies (On leave Fall 2025)

mherrmann@wooster.edu

Beth Muellner standing in front of the Berliner Dom in Berlin Germany

Beth Muellner

Professor of German Studies; Department Chair of German and Russian Studies

bmuellner@wooster.edu

Peter Pozefsky

Peter Pozefsky

Michael O. Fisher Professor of History, Global and International Studies; Russian Studies

ppozefsky@wooster.edu


Latest Russian Studies News

Niklas Manz, associate professor of physics

Wooster physicist Niklas Manz goes beyond his discipline to study how phenomena get their names

Niklas Manz, associate professor of physics at The College of Wooster, studies the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction, but why was it named for those two scientists, […]

Anne O. Fisher

The College of Wooster welcomes translator Anne O. Fisher for reading and panel discussion Oct. 17

The College of Wooster will welcome author and translator Anne O. Fisher for a reading from her forthcoming translation of Ukranian writer Olena Stiazhkina’s […]

Round yellow button featuring a white illustration of a campus building with black text reading "I DID IT! THE COLLEGE OF WOOSTER"—given to students upon submitting their Independent Study.

Putin’s “Corrective Project”: An Examination of State Repression Against Russian Nongovernmental Organizations

Name: Ethan Sieber Majors: Political Science, Russian Studies Advisors: Kent Kille, Zach Rewinski Since the early 2000s, restrictions against nongovernmental organizations in Russia have drastically […]

group of four people pose for photo in black polo shirts at The College of Wooster

AMRE | Wayne County Dog Shelter and Adoption Center

Sarah Brunot ’22 | Environmental Studies Kate Yordy ’22 | Russian Studies & Economics Special thanks to the following sponsors: Laura B. Frick Charitable […]

More Russian Studies Articles

Major

Students who major in Russian Studies complete 11 courses, including courses on the Russian language, literature, culture, and history. Students interested in Russian and East Central European literature and culture can take advantage of several interdepartmental programs in which the Department of Russian Studies cooperates: Global & International Studies, Comparative Literature, and Global Media & Digital Studies.

We encourage our majors to study in Russia or other Russophone country for the duration of a semester or summer program, or to attend a summer intensive program in one of the US-based institutions. Our majors have received full scholarships to pursue the study of Russian at programs like the Indiana University Summer Language Workshop and the Critical Language Scholarship program in Moscow, Russia.

View Courses

Minor

Students who minor in Russian Studies complete six language, history, literature and culture courses focused on Russia and Eastern Europe. Students interested in Russian and East Central European literature and culture can take advantage of several interdepartmental programs in which the Department of Russian Studies cooperates: Global & International Studies, Comparative Literature, and Global Media & Digital Studies.

View Courses

Independent Study

All majors complete a one-semester Independent Study project in the junior year and a two-semester senior I.S. thesis. Working closely with a faculty advisor, each senior has the opportunity to develop his or her interests through the process of writing an undergraduate capstone thesis then defending it in an oral exam with the advisor and a second faculty member.
For their junior and senior I.S. projects, majors have worked on topics as diverse as the environmental movement in Siberia, feminine literary perceptions of Stalin’s purges, and Dostoevsky’s novels and the literary theory of Bakhtin, Fashion & Femininity in Soviet Union, and the Space Race.

Previous I.S. projects from Russian Studies students include:

  • Make Some Noize: Rap as a Form of Political Protest in Russia
  • The Song of Siros
  • Kindred Ideologies: Fascism and Communism in Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate
  • What it means to be Lithuanian in America and what Russia’s got to do with it: ethnic identity formation among later generations in a diasporic community
  • Sputnik: The Beep-Beep-Beep Heard Around the World – An Analysis of the Orbital Trajectory of Sputnik and its Reception in the Soviet Union
  • The Memorialization and Legacy of the Soviet Playwright Aleksandr Vampilov in the Irkutsk Region
  • The First Spacewalk: An Exploration of the Mathematical and Cultural Implications of the Space Race (double major with mathematics)
  • The Babushka: Between Past and Future in Contemporary Russian Literature
  • Once upon a Regime: Nazi and Soviet Propaganda in Children’s Literature in the 1930s and 40s (double major with German)
View the 2021 Russian Studies Independent Study Guide

 

Search the I.S. Database

Student Year I.S. Title Major 1 Major 2 Advisor
Please search to view results

Alumni

After a year of fully-funded research in Irkutsk, Siberia with a Fulbright grant (cut short by the Covid-19 pandemic), Erin Tumpan ‘19 is working toward a doctorate in Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University.

Gillian Gregory ‘19, a Mathematics and Russian Studies double major, is enthusiastically starting a graduate program in Computational Linguistics at Stony Brook University.

Graduating in the middle of the pandemic, Daphne Letherer ‘20, a double major in Russian and Global and International Studies, served with AmeriCorps, working at the non-profit Ascend Indiana as Operations and Research Coordinator and subsequently stayed with the organization full-time.

Russian minor and Global and International Studies major Maureen Hanes ‘21 is excited about a year of teaching English in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan through a Fulbright fellowship.

Faculty Emeriti

Wooster W logo on a cream colored background

Elena Sokol

Professor Emerita, Russian Studies

esokol@wooster.edu

Alumni

 

 


Related Articles

Sydney (Maureen) Hanes ’21

Fulbright awards English Teaching Assistantship to Wooster global and international studies major

Sydney (Maureen) Hanes ’21 will teach English in Kyrgyzstan during the next academic year.

Student in 'Misija Sibiras' shirt standing by a monument at the College of Wooster.

Marija Cyvas ’19 Wins Award for Undergraduate Paper on Baltic Studies

Recent graduate’s Independent Study on Lithuanian-Americans receives recognition