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Academic Year 2003/2004

Women in Russia: 1825-2000
RUSS 257 FA
Crosslistings:
WMST 246
REES 257

This course looks at the conditions of women in Russia today and then traces how these conditions have evolved during the past two centuries. It is an interdisciplinary course, combining literary studies with the relatively new field of Russian women's history. In both fields, students will address topics that historians and literary scholars have only recently addressed: traditional family structure of Russian peasants, 19th-century gentry family structure, changes in women's roles and women's consciousness as a result of modernizing trends (urbanization, exposure to western cultures), women's liberation as an aspect of the Russian Revolution and Soviet society, modern Russian literature's focus on relations between men and women, the emergence of women authors (Tsvetaeva, Mandelshtam, and Akhmatova) as leading authorities of contemporary Russia.

MAJOR READINGS

Pushkin, QUEEN OF SPADES, CAPTAIN'S DAUGHTER
Pavlova, DOUBLE LIFE
Herzen, WHO'S TO BLAME
Turgenev, FIRST LOVE
Ostrovsky, THE STORM
Tolstoy, KREUTZER SONATA
Chekhov, UNCLE VANYA, THREE SISTERS
Gorky, THE LOWER DEPTHS
Akhmatova, SELECTED POETRY
Tsvetaeva, SELECTED PROSE AND POETRY
Mandelshtam, HOPE AGAINST HOPE
Tolstaya, ON THE GOLDEN PORCH
Petrushevskaya, SELECTED PROSE AND DRAMA
Hansen and Liden, MOSCOW WOMEN
du Plexis-Gray, WALKING THE TIGHTROPE
Ransel, TH E FAMILY IN IMPERIAL RUSSIA, MOTHERS OF MISERY
Clements, RUSSIA'S WOMEN
Stites, THE WOMEN'S LIBERATION MOVEMENT IN RUSSIA
Levin, SEX AND SOCIETY IN THE WORLD OF THE ORTHODOX SLAVS
Worobec, PEASANT RUSSIA

EXAMINATIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS

In-class mid-term and final exams; two short papers; one final paper.

COURSE FORMAT: Seminar

REGISTRATION INFORMATION

Level: UGRD    Credit: 1    Gen Ed Area Dept: HA RUSS    Grading Mode: Student Option   

Prerequisites: NONE Links to Web Resources For This Course.

Last Updated on MAR-19-2004

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