This course examines issues of gender and sexuality in Russian culture and society from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day, with emphasis both on...

Gender and Sexuality in Russian, Ukrainian and Soviet Cultures (SEES0145)

This course examines issues of gender and sexuality in Russian culture and society from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day, with emphasis both on historical developments and on contemporary theoretical approaches. It will examine how Russia’s awareness of both its difference from and similarity to the West is reflected in matters relating to gender and sexuality. Explicitly interdisciplinary in its focus, the course will deal with questions of social and historical developments, as well as with debates in the artistic and cultural sphere (with literature and other media serving both as a mirror of social life and as a site of debate). It will also consider how key texts in the field of gender studies might be applied in the Russian context. Four broad topics are covered: nineteenth-century radical thought and the question of female emancipation and equality; Russian Decadence and fin-de-siecle sexualities; revolutionary identities and the New Soviet Man and Woman; and late-Soviet and post-Soviet developments, such as the rise of performative identities, the application of Western critical methods and the growth and suppression of a gay rights movement. Students will also study a number of key Western theorists of gender and sexuality (which may include Freud, Foucault, de Beauvoir, Woolf, Kristeva, Irigaray, Cixous,Butler, and others).

DIASPORA LITERATURE MEMORY TRAUMA EXILE RUSSIA EASTERN-EUROPE

This module examines the most essential twentieth-century experiences that affected literary production and aesthetic language in Russia and Eastern Europe....

Literatures of Rupture: Modernism in Russia and Eastern Europe (SEES0041)

This module examines the most essential twentieth-century experiences that affected literary production and aesthetic language in Russia and Eastern Europe. Each of the four thematic blocks will focus on one of the following topics: Avant-Garde and Experiment; The City and Modernity; Exile, Dislocation, Diaspora; and Trauma and Memory. The exploration of key texts drawn from Russian and EE literary traditions and approached from a comparative perspective will provide focused case-studies of a range of socio-cultural concepts, themes, styles, and discourses that defined modernism and its evolution throughout the 20th century.