A Matter of Life and Death: Fiction in the Soviet Era
RUSS 206
Spring 2015
| Section:
01
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| Crosslisting:
REES 206, RULE 206 |
In this course we will study the greatest Russian prose works of the 20th century, including the modernist masterpiece PETERSBURG by Andrei Bely, a phantasmagorical depiction of Russia's most legendary city during the 1905 Revolution; Isaac Babel's terse and devastating stories of the Civil War; Bulgakov's MASTER AND MARGARITA, in which the Devil visits Moscow in the 1930s, when mass arrests are making people "disappear"; and Solzhenitsyn's pioneering report from the Gulag, ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH, that he dared to submit for publication during Khrushchev's thaw. The course will also consider the lingering impact of Russian imperialism on Soviet and post-Soviet life, as the Soviet state tries to extend its "civilizing" influence to central Asia (Platonov, SOUL; Trubetskoi, Letters from Uzbekistan) and as the postimperial Russian state wages war to hold onto its territories in the Caucasus (the 1996 film PRISONER OF THE CAUCASUS; reportage by Anna Politkovskaia). The course ends with Ulitskaya's 21st-century novel MEDEA AND HER CHILDREN, a kind of summing-up of the Russian 20th-century experience. Students who wish to read excerpts from the course offerings in the original Russian should see the instructor to enroll in a half-credit tutorial. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA REES |
| Course Format: Lecture / Discussion | Grading Mode: Student Option |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (REES-MN) |
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Past Enrollment Probability: 90% or above |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
Pushkin, "The Bronze Horseman"
Bely, PETERSBURG
Zamyatin, WE
Platonov, KOTLOVAN
Olesha, ENVY
Bulgakov, MASTER AND MARGARITA
Stories by Babel, Zoshchenko, Aksyonov, Bitov, Aleshkovsky, Tatyana Tolstaya
Solzhenitsyn, A DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH; MATRYONA'S HOME
Eugeniya Ginsburg, JOURNEY INTO THE WHIRLWIND
Petrushevskaya, THE TIME: NIGHT
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Examinations and Assignments:
Three 5-page papers. Frequent short ungraded response papers. |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
Literature in translation. Attendance and participation are required. See web page for 206 at p.meyer.faculty.wesleyan.edu/russian-206-a-matter-of-life-and-death |
| Instructor(s): Meyer,Priscilla Times: ..T.R.. 11:00AM-12:20PM; Location: FISK312; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 19 | | SR major: 2 | JR major: 2 | | |
| Seats Available: 9 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 4 | JR non-major: 4 | SO: 4 | FR: 3 |
| Web Resources: Syllabus |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 0 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 0 |
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