January Term in St. Petersburg, Russia

3 Mount Holyoke students received stipends to travel to Saint Petersburg

Alessandra Massa writes: Traveling to Saint Petersburg after taking 19th-Century Russian Literature and War and Peace with Professor Scotto absolutely amplified my experience.  

As I walked across a few of the 400+ bridges that connect the city, I thought back to Gogol鈥檚 short stories and Crime and Punishment.  I pictured Ivan the barber鈥檚 failed attempts to rid himself of the nose and Raskolnikov鈥檚 psychological collapse.  I vividly remember the first time I walked through the Military Gallery of 1812 in the Hermitage.  The generals and war heroes I read about for an entire semester, through the 1400 pages and nearly six hundred thousand words of War and Peace, instantly came to life in over 300 portraits. Taking these two classes provided me with foundations in Russian literature and history needed to get the most out of my J-term abroad.

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