World Literature: Slavic Folklore: Gender & Sex

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

This course will explore the diverse and fantastical world of fairytales in the Slavic world to unearth their relationship to societal values, with an eye to the construction and subversion of gender and sexuality. Fairytales are a form of folk literature that have existed since the early formation of society; they are passed down orally from generation to generation with the intention of instilling societal expectations (such as gender or behavioral norms, cultural values, and other socially constructed standards). This course will look at the form and functions of traditional and contemporary fairytales in the Slavic world. In the nineteenth century, scholars in Russia, as in Western Europe, put enormous effort into documenting and recording these fairytales for the purpose of constructing gender norms and prescribing the expression of sexuality. This scholarly pursuit simultaneously reinvigorated the art of fairytales, and we see the proliferation of modern folktales with contemporary meaning by writers such as Alexander Pushkin during the imperial era, Yuri Olesha in the early Soviet period, and Lyudmila Petrushevskaya in the Post-Soviet world. This course will offer students a dive deep into the unfamiliar corners of Slavic folk literature in the way to understanding the beliefs, anxieties, and desires the motivated the construction of a Russian gender and sexual identity across time and space.