Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures

SLA358H1S, Breaking Away from Empire:
Ukrainian Fiction Since Independence
Spring 2023

Assignment 2 is due at the beginning of class March 22, 2023.

You must write a brief essay of about 800–900 words, about three pages. Essays should be formatted with 1 inch margins, double spacing, and 12 point type.
You don't need an extra page for your name and the title or another extra page for references to works cited (If you cite any works, you need to indicate a reference but if you cite only the assigned text, just give a page number). Write clearly. Choose the right words, shape your ideas into meaningful sentences, and structure your argument into cohesive paragraphs. Make sure you say EXACTLY what you mean, not something almost similar to what you thought you might want to say. Be brief and get to your point directly. You don't need an introduction, you don't need to tell the reader the plot of the work, or the biography of the author, or the history of Ukraine or Ukrainian literature up to this point. Get to your argument immediately. Demonstrate that you have given some consideration to the ideas you are expressing and that you understand how these ideas relate to other ways of looking at the topic. Make an argument that helps explain your reading of the work.

This is the topic:

In Serhii Zhadan's Voroshilovgrad, there is a soccer match played in chapter 5, part 1. Write an essay interpreting the significance of this incident in the novel. Is there anything special about sport? How do expectations of the game differ from what actually happened? How does this incident fit into a larger interpretation of the novel?