Okay. So, Vroon knows what he is talking about. He is quite obviously well versed in both Russian history and Dostoevsky. However, I believe this was his first quarter teaching the class with "exams" instead of two take home essays, as well as cutting out The Devils and replacing it with the shorter novel, The Double. This worked with mixed effect. Without a doubt the reading load was lighter than in previous years, and if you actually follow the syllabus its manageable. However, the exams are an utter disaster. It is obvious that this is the first year he is giving the exams, because they are riddled with punctuation, grammar and spelling mistakes. Moreover, the questions he ask have a tendency to be preposterous. They are a mixture of extremely obvious questions and some very specific ones, which on a first read of the novel you would not quite memorize. The essay questions are usually centered on a topic we discussed in class, but often not on the MAIN topic of the quarter. Rather, Vroon will choose the secondary or tertiary core topic and have his students write an essay on it in less than 30 minutes. The final essay was not a problem, it was an effectively easy question because we had covered a lot of it in class, but it still required some thinking. However, it was almost impossible to fit everything into the 2000 word limit he specified.

Overall, I think that Professor Vroon seemed a bit preoccupied with teaching his own original ideas about the novel, bred after decades of reading and rereading them, instead of teaching literary analysis or the historical and cultural significance. It was very beneficial to read these novels in a class setting, but due quite obviously to the pace, I don't think they were fully explored. If you are taking another literature class then I would not recommend taking this alongside it as the reading load may prove to be your undoing. Also, take good class notes because essays will undoubtably come from something Vroon lectured on.

Good luck!

I loved this class and I thought Prof Vroon was outstanding. He was very informed and has a solid background on Russian history, the language, and literature. He was interesting and at times a bit kooky. I loved the books we read (The Devils, The Brothers K, and The Idiot), although it was a heavy reading load and most of us did not complete it all (although I still got an A in the class). The lectures are not too long and I learned a lot about Russian literature and history that I knew nothing of before - I feel I gained a lot of knowledge from this class, and Dostoevsky is an amazing author so it was fun to explore his works. The only thing that bothered me was the giant crowd of Russian speakers who would sit together and stare at and talk about fellow students in thier native tongue (very annoying!!), or would ask questions IN RUSSIAN to show off thier language skills, which left the rest of us confused. Also, Vroon made a memorable reference to Britney Spears that surprised and delighted us all. Don't hesitate to take this.