Irina Reyfman

This class honestly surpassed my expectations. I was terrified going into the semester, thinking that there was no way my Russian would be good enough to make sense of the readings, but Reyfman worked magic. She has a very good sense of gauging a student's level and abilities, without dumbing down the material. This is the real highlight of the class: it introduces students of Russian at the intermediate-ish level to classic literature, allowing for real language-learning to occur and for slivers of the beauty of this language to come through. My Russian improved all-around, though obviously this class trains reading and writing the most. The readings themselves are a lot of fun; Reyfman crafted an interesting syllabus, and she also has a sense of humor. She really cares about her students; she'll incorporate our homework comments into class discussion and she gives back all written assignments with grammar corrections and comments. I'll be taking her Chteniia class next semester -- again I'm terrified, but I trust that we'll be in excellent hands.

I thought this was a great class. The demographics of the class are pretty interesting-- it's a mix of grad students, 3rd/4th year undergrads, and a couple of native speakers ( disclaimer: I am one of those native speakers). Regardless of this, I thought the class discussions were very interesting, and I thought everyone participated to the best of their ability, which is all that Reyfman asked for. As for Reyfman, herself, she is incredibly prepared for every class. She has the syllabus prepared before the semester starts and sticks to it. She asks great questions every class, and she often provides students with a small lecture about the background (especially since war and peace has many important historical events that students might not know about). Overall, I highly recommend this class and professor Reyfman to anyone interested in Russian literature with a good enough grasp on the language to be able to read it in Russian.

This is a good class, and Professor Reyfman is really caring and nice. She makes the class fun; she is ALWAYS prepared and on time; and she is a fair grader. Most of all, she knows absolutely everything about Russian literature. It's hard to imagine.

Lit Hum with Prof Reyfman is difficult to summarize. She is a strong, authoritative figure in the classroom (her thick Russian accent was only partly responsible), though she was nice and cared about students who put in a little effort. Class discussions could be dull at times, but to what extent the class was responsible is difficult to say. Many students simply didn't do the readings (myself at times) and those that did often kept to themselves. Professor Reyfman had an inexhaustible list of questions that she prepared for every discussion. Some were thought provoking and developed into into interesting discussions, but others it seems were designed to see who in the class had read. My classmates seemed divided pretty evenly on who liked Prof Reyfman more than our last Lit Hum Prof.

Wow. That is all I can say after taking this class. Very fair workload, but the readings were very fun so it did not even feel like work! There were only three people total in the class, which I was scared of at first, but it ended up being to each of our benefit because it felt like a discussion everyday rather than a normal class. Professor Reyfman always brings up very though-provoking questions and the discussions were always interesting. I will be taking another class with her next semester!

About 50 pages of reading per session. Reyfman asks you to write up a question weekly and send it to her, which she uses for discussion. Thus the students help guide the discussion, though Reyfman also comes up with great discussion questions of her own. She assigned a couple of papers, a midterm take home paper, and a final (in class essays). She grades fairly. For the papers, she cares most about content. She assigns you two grades, one for content and the other for grammar etc. You can rewrite it to boost the second component.

One night earlier this spring, reading a sliver of Boris Pasternak's novella, The childhood of Liuvers, in the company of Prof. Irina Reyfman's vocabulary list, I met with an insurmountable poetic phrase. My eyes shuffled hopefully from that text to this list, which revealed, "I will explain in class. To explain this, it is necessary to draw." Indeed, Prof. Reyfman draws. She draws up these lists nightly, and posts them on Courseworks, explaining ambiguities owing to the peculiarities of epochs (slang, outdated articles of clothing, etc.) or ambiguities born of breathless or meandering sentences. She draws on the board to explain a knot of a word: the rim of a sieve, for example. In her two-course sequence, Introduction to Russian Literature, she draws together a motley crew of students. We possess the language with varying grasp: some are but in third-year Russian; others are heritage speakers (although these are the exception rather than the rule). Each of us learns to read slowly, to "caress the divine details," as Nabokov urged. In class, Prof. Reyfman is patient with misplaced accents; she allows for the revision of essays. She deftly ties our response questions " written and emailed to her on the heels of a few pages of reading in the original " into the discussion. She gives us the floor sometimes: we hold conferences in the miniature, thus learning how to present an ar…

There's no getting out of doing the readings for each class, but taking an hour or so twice a week to do these readings was honestly a delight. She assigns about ~5 pages of reading per class, which lets you re-read / close-read / whatever to your heart's content. Homework consists of a written discussion post that you send to Reyfman by the morning of each class. Three compositions throughout the semester (2 pages double-spaced), prompts vary between more creative exercises and academic essays, which she lets you re-submit to correct grammar mistakes. A final, 10-minute-ish oral presentation on the last day of class. Midterm and final have passage ID questions and ~2-3 essay prompts in the same style as the semester essay prompts. She's a very fair grader! My pro-tip is to go through her vocabulary lists for each short story when doing the readings, and to review the grammar corrections and feedback that she gives on each homework discussion post. She also gives you back your midterm and final with grammar corrections. She doesn't teach grammar (since this is a literature class, not a language class), but her corrections and comments are very extensive and super helpful, so review all of them, not just the essay corrections.

This woman is incredible amazing wonderful. I don't have enough adjectives to describe Professor Reyfman. Since beginning the course, my Russian reading, grammar, and vocabulary has improved tremendously due to her. She is thought-provoking, incredibly intelligent, eloquent, and one of the best professors I have ever had.

Reading 2-3 hours per week. Two-page composition every few weeks (three total). Midterm and final, along with a 10 min final presentation at the end.