HIST046 - Portraits of Soviet Society: Literature, Film, Drama

How can art and literature open a window on Russian lives lived over the course of the tumultuous twentieth century? this course adopts a unique approach to questions cultural and social history. Each week-long unit is organize around a medium-length film, text, or set of texts by some of the most important cultural figures of the era (novella, play, memoir, film, short stories) which opens up a single scene of social history: work, village, avant-garde, war, Gulag, and so on. Each cultural work is accompanied by a set of supplementary materials: historical readings, paintings, cultural-analyical readings, excerpts from other literary works, etc. We will read social history through culture and culture through history. Prerequisite: All readings and lectures in English.