World Literature: Art of Revolution

Topics such as Russian author(s) (e.g. Dostoevsky, Tolstoy), genre (e.g. the Russian novel), literary school (e.g. Russian Formalism), or period (19th or 20th century literature). May be repeated for credit with different content. Topics vary by offering; periodic offering at intervals that may exceed four years.

Open to degree and PACE students; Co-located with WLIT 2250; Total combined enrollment = 40

Russian history has been characterized as "revolutionary," as opposed to "evolutionary": where some cultures view history as society's steady progress toward a more advanced future, the stages of Russian/Soviet history are often seen as "oriented toward a decisive break with what preceded it," in the words of cultural theorists Lotman and Uspenskii. This course will literalize this "revolutionary" conception of Russian culture to examine the literary, visual, musical, and other works of artistic expression surrounding four such moments in its history: Peter’s 18th-century Western turn and the 1825 Decembrist uprising; the Modernist revolution in the arts surrounding the 1905 political revolution; the cataclysmic October Revolution of 1917; and the political and cultural ferment of the late-Soviet Glasnost’ period. Texts will be primarily literary, but will also include major works of visual, architectural, musical, theatrical, and cinematic arts from each of the four eras.