Global Arc

"Moscow/Petersburg: Russia through Two Capitals." This interdisciplinary course explores Russian culture through Russia's two capitals: Moscow and St. Petersburg. We will traverse these cityscapes as historical, cultural, and mythological spaces - from the past to the present day - in literary works, historical accounts, art, and film. We will investigate the sites of key landmarks, including the Moscow metro, the Hermitage and Red Square, in order to excavate the layers of cultural history which underlie contemporary Russian identity.

A seminar to accompany Princeton's world premiere of the Meyerhold-Prokofiev production, rehearsed and then abandoned in 1937, of Pushkin's historical drama [Boris Godunov ]. Topics include the Russian "Time of Troubles" (1604-1615), Pushkin as dramatist (1820s), Meyerhold's modernist theatre (1910s-1930s), and Prokofiev as composer of stage music. We will measure this production against the norms of Stalinist performance art - and then suggest why it would have been a political and artistic scandal.

This seminar provides an introduction to the avant-garde projects that flourished in Russia from the Bolshevik revolution through the 1920s: Constructivism and production art, experimental film and theater, photomontage and factography. Our inquiry into this moment of unprecedented artistic experimentation will address formal and critical innovations (modernism, operativism, biomechanics), ideological agendas (art as a force to transform social relations in everyday life), and historical contexts (the Civil War and the new mass cultural formations of a nascent spectacle society).

Responding to the widespread injustices and social inequalities of their day, Russian writers turned to their literary craft to wrestle with the essential question: "What is to be done?" We will join our authors and the characters they create as they debate competing ideologies, struggle with timeless human questions, imagine more equitable ways of organizing society, and explore the ethical and moral concerns at the root of pressing social and political issues. How do Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and our other captivating writers confront the problems of their era and transform them into literary masterpieces that transcend time and place?

For several centuries, Siberia has enjoyed a reputation that is much worse than the place itself. Since the 17th century, Siberia has been the ultimate place of exile for criminals and dissidents. But Siberia is much more than a detention space. For ages Siberia provided an escape for those who found Russia's ruling regimes unbearable. Remote, severe, yet free, Siberia was Russia's Wild East - with plenty of land, no landlords, no serfdom, no censorship, and -often- with no law. The course explores Siberia's histories, myths, and memories - from the Siberia of nomadic tribes and Russian tsars to the Siberia of post-Soviet oil giants.

The purpose of this course is to help students prepare for their junior independent work, senior theses, and departmental exams. The first part of the course will be devoted to close readings of short poems and literary prose texts. In the second part, the emphasis will shift to academic and journalistic prose. A major goal of the course will be learning to write coherent Russian academic prose. To support these reading and writing skills, we will also introduce participants to research methods: library research, evaluation of sources, value (and potential pitfalls) of the Russian internet.

In this course we will analyze the culture of resistance in the post-World War II Eastern Europe. We will look through the lens of literature at the main political issues that afflicted Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and other countries in the second part of the 20th century. We will study texts (essays, memoirs, novels, short stories, plays, and poems) which offered various ways to resist moral and political oppression. The authors will include George Orwell, Franz Kafka (as a precursor), Hannah Arendt, Vaclav Havel, Tadeusz Borowski, Bertolt Brecht, Heda Kovaly, and others. All readings will be in English.

Selected Polish, Czech, Slovak, and Hungarian movies will serve in this interdisciplinary seminar as a basis for discussion of Jewish pre-World War II life, the extermination of Jews during the war and the difficulties of post-war Jewish life in Eastern Europe. We will address the history of Jewish life in the region, film as social medium, the difficulties of representation, the relationship between various kinds of arts (film adaptation of literature, art in film, film about art), and moral issues linked to the depiction of war and persecution.

The course introduces students to stories that every Russian is exposed to as a child. Seemingly simple, these narratives bear deep cultural significance. We will sample a dozen of Russian fairy tales belonging to the oral tradition. We will also read and discuss two fairy tales by Alexander Pushkin, as well as short excerpts from the works by the foremost Russian scholar of folklore Vladimir Propp. Readings and discussion will be in Russian. This course is envisioned as both a language and literature course.

What is it that endows Chekhov's art with its ability to transcend divides, ensursing its lasting pertinence? Could it be that the secret lies in his unprecedented insight into the theatricality of the human predicament and the role of laughter in it? This course will undertake a comprehensive overview of his mastery of the short story in its development to arrive at a better appreciation of his theater. Unconventional literature cannot be taught conventionally, hence this collaboration between a literary scholar and a theater director.