Documentary Fictions
CHUM 323
Spring 2024
| Section:
01
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| This course may be repeated for credit. |
| Crosslisting:
REES 226, RUSS 226, COL 322 |
| Course Cluster and Certificates: Social, Cultural, and Critical Theory Certificate |
How stable is the binary distinction between the documentary and the fictional? Is fiction's claim to representing reality any less valid than that of non-fiction? How does creative non-fiction conjure the sense of the Real? Can an archival document convey the depth of spiritual, emotional, and aesthetically infused intimacy on its own? What happens when the documentary and the fictional overlap to produce competing versions of the Real? What is at stake in such an overlap when the competing versions of the Real vie for a definitive, true account of events past and present?
This class investigates various genres of storytelling that appeal to the documentary and the factual in pursuit of authenticity: propaganda, counter-propaganda, conspiracy theories, political and artistic manifestos, historical fiction and cinema, diary writing, autobiography and memoir, and documentary photography and film. Focusing geographically on East-Central Europe and Russia and chronologically on the last 100 years, the class will take up such thematic units as civil war, socialist realism, capitalist realism, the deaths of dictators, revolutionary hagiography, homefront narratives, and survivor testimony. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA CHUM |
| Course Format: Lecture / Discussion | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Major Requirement for: (CSCT)(REES-Lang/Lit/C) |
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Past Enrollment Probability: 75% - 89% |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
The readings will include the theoretical writings of Hannah Arendt, Svetlana Boym, Bruno Latour, Jacques Rancičre, Susan Sontag, and Sergey Tretyakov, as well as primary texts by Anna Akhmatova, Svetlana Alexievich, Lydia Ginzburg, Irčne Némirovsky, Gad Beck, Viktor Shklovsky and films by Dziga Vertov, Kira Muratova, Alexander Sokurov, Sergei Loznitsa, and Kirill Serebrennikov
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Examinations and Assignments:
Reading responses; midterm project; and a final paper (ca. 10 pp.) |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
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| Instructor(s): Utkin,Roman Times: ....R.. 01:20PM-04:10PM; Location: CFH106; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 15 | | SR major: 2 | JR major: 2 | | |
| Seats Available: 4 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 3 | JR non-major: 3 | SO: 3 | FR: 2 |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 2 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 1 | Unranked: 1 |
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