The Department of Poetics and Literary Theory offers academic courses on theory and history of literature, as well as on other domains of culture that have an impact on — and are reflected in — literature. Our work is founded on the accomplishments of semiotics, aesthetics and sociology of literature; we also draw on the findings of intellectual history. Rather than merely supplying them with an off-the-shelf methodological toolbox, we introduce our students to dynamically evolving scholarly knowledge, variously applied to the multiplicity of artistic phenomena.
We aim to create a flexible system comprising courses developed by individual instructors and co-taught seminars which will help our students — future or beginning humanists — to find their own scholarly path. This is why at the end of each course, as a rule, students write an essay or a research paper, and why most of the courses taught at the Department are unique and focus on the topic of the instructors’ ongoing research. While maintaining the pluralism of ideas and methods, we strive to establish a coherent curriculum which can form the basis of a future MA-level program.
The Department was founded in 2026 by literary scholars based in the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Israel, Norway, and other countries. All our instructors have a doctoral degree and, in addition to teaching, pursue an active research program.
The topics of seminars that they taught at the University include the history of literary scholarship in Russia and Ukraine, Russian émigré literature as a phenomenon of European modernism, the intellectual legacy of Roland Barthes and Fredric Jameson, affective responses to artistic information and its deficit. Our seminar participants have authored joint publications with their instructors in scholarly journals and collective volumes.
New course programs are subjected to rigorous assessment in accord with the procedures described in the Department’s Rulebook (available in Russian).
Students must send letters of motivation to apply to individual courses via the open call made available at Свободный Университет – Libenter ac liberaliter at the beginning of each semester.
