|
Syllabus
«
back to homepage
skip straight to class schedule»
|
|
Cities
and Civilizations:
An Introduction to Eurasian Studies
|
| HIS/SLAV
W3224 |
Instructors:
Catharine Nepomnyashchy and Mark von Hagen
Tues, Thurs 4:10-5:25 · 717 Hamilton Hall |
|
|
Description: |
|
An
introduction to Eurasian studies (as successor to Russian/East
European and Soviet studies) through an examination of the
history and culture of major centers of urban settlement.
Eurasia focuses attention on the multiethnicity, religious
pluralism, hybrid identities, and regional diversity of
a set of communities inhabiting the lands between East Asia
and West and Central Europe: they include, but are not limited
to the state formations known as Kyivan Rus' and the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth, Muscovy, the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union,
as well as the Habsburg and Ottoman empires. The East European
and Eurasian cities will be compared with one another and
with contemporary cities outside the geopolitical boundaries
that are the primary focus of the course. History and culture
will be approached through lectures and readings, including
primary historical texts, works of imaginative literature
and art (including film, music, painting, architecture),
scholarly articles. Lecture class with discussion sections.
|
| Assignments:
|
30%
class attendance, quizzes, film reviews, and
participation in discussions online and in sections
40% one synthetic research project (10-12
pages each in length), possibly involving multiple media
30% final exam
|
| Required
texts: |
|
The
books listed below have been ordered into Labyrinth Books
(536 West 112 St., between Broadway and Amsterdam). Whether
you buy or borrow, please use the editions of the books
listed below. Other required readings (marked with asterisks
in the course schedule) will be made available either in
class or as a course pack (to be purchased from Copy Quick,
on Amsterdam Ave at 119th St.).
Andreas
Kappeler, The Russian Empire: A Multiethnic History
(Longman, 2001)
Michael Hamm, ed., The City in Late Imperial
Russia (Indiana University Press, 1986)
Anna Reid, Borderland: A Journey Through the
History of Ukraine (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997)
Serge A. Zenkovsky, Medieval Russia's Epics,
Chronicles, and Tales (revised and enlarged edition,
Meridian)
Daniel Brower and Edward Lazzerini, eds.,
Russia's Orient: Imperial Borderlands and People, 1700-1917
(Indiana University Press, 1997)
Alexander Pushkin, The Captain's Daughter and
Other Stories
Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (Basic
Books)
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
(Vintage)
John Scott, Behind the Urals (Indiana University
Press)
Sholom Aleichem, The Letters of Menachem Mendl
(Yale University Press)
Mikhail Bulgakov, Master and Margarita (Vintage)
Also
recommended:
M. Christine Boyer, The City of Collective Memory
(MIT, 1996)
Françoise Choay, The Invention of the
Historic Monument (Cambridge, 2001) and The Rule
and the Model(MIT, 1995)
Edward
Soja, Postmetropolis (Blackwell, 1999)
Rosalyn Deutsche, Evictions: Art and Spatial
Politics (MIT, 1998)
|
| Film: |
| A
film series entitled "The Eurasian City on Film" will air
weekly at the Harriman Institute in conjunction with this
course. Students will be expected to attend and write brief
reviews on at least six of the films in the course of the
semester. Click here for film schedule. |
|
|
| Jan.
21 |
Introduction |
| Jan.
23 |
What
is a city?
*Kingsley
Davis, "The Urbanization of the Human Population"
*Lewis Mumford, "What is a City?"
*Lewis Mumford, "Introduction," The Culture of
Cities.
*Georg Simmel, "The Metropolis and Mental Life"
|
| Jan.
28 |
What
is Eurasia?
*Marc
Bassin, "Asia"
*Kappeler, "Introduction"
*Alfred Rieber, "Persistent Factors in Russian Foreign
Policy: An Interpretive Essay"
|
| Jan.
30 |
Cities
and Eurasian Civilization
Hamm,
"Introduction," The City in Late Imperial Russia
*J.H. Bater, "Introduction" (Rus in Urbe)
*William L. Blackwell, "Modernization and Urbanization
in Russia: A Comparative View"
|
|
Unit
One. Kiev/Kyiv: Crossroad of Civilizations
|
| Feb.
4 |
Kiev
Today
Reid, "The New Jerusalem: Kiev" and "Europe
or Little Russia? Ukraina"
*Blair Ruble and Nancy Popson, "Kyiv's Nontraditional
Immigrants," Post-Soviet Geography and Economics,
v. 41, n. 5, pp. 365-378
Hamm, "Continuity and Change in Late Imperial Kiev,"
The City in Late Imperial Russia |
| Feb.
6 |
Guest
Lecturer: Svitlana Svich
"Gender and National Imagery in Contemporary Ukrainian
Urban Settings"
*Michel de Certeau, "Walking in the City," The Practice
of Everyday Life.
*Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City (selection)
|
| Feb.
11 |
Origins
and Myths
*Mircea Eliade, Myth of the Eternal Return (selection)
Kappeler, "The Medieval Background"
Zenkovsky, "Stories from the Primary Chronicle,"
The Lay of Igor's Campaign (pp. 43-76, 101-133, 167-190)
Titus D. Hewryk, The
Lost Architecture of Kiev (exhibition catalogue,
Ukrainian Museum, 1982)
Opera: Prince Igor
• RealVideo
clip | RealAudio
clip: Khan Konchak, "O net, net drug"
|
| Feb.
13 |
Ukraine
Between East and West
Kappeler, "Westward Expansion"
Reid, "Poles and Cossacks: Kamyanets Podilsky" and
"The Books of Genesis: Lviv"
*"The Union of Brest (1590s)" in Russel P. Moroziuk,
Politics of a Church Union (Chicago 1983), pp. 17-21.
*"The Agreement of Pereiaslav" in John Basarab,
Pereiaslav 1654: A Historiographical Study (Edmonton
1982), pp. 230-236.
*"Magdeburg
Law" (article from Ukrainian Encylopedia).
Mykhailo Hrushevsky, "The Traditional Scheme of `Russian'
History and the Problem of a Rational Ordering of the History
of the Slavs;" From Kievan Rus' to Modern Ukraine:
Formation of the Ukrainian Nation (Cambridge, Ma., 1984),
pp. 355-364.
*Mykola Kostomarov, "Two Russian Nationalities"
(1861) |
|
Unit
2. Kazan': Clash of Civilizations?
|
| Feb.
18 |
Kazan
and Islam today
*Samuel
Huntington, "Clash
of Civilizations," Foreign Affairs (Summer
1993)
Reid, "The Wart on Russia's Nose: Crimea"
*Edward Said, Orientalism
Susan Layton, "Nineteenth Century Russian Mythologies
of Caucasian Savagery," in Russia's Orient
Kappeler, “Colonial Expansion in Asia in the Nineteenth
Century,” The Russian Empire.
Daniel Brower, “Islam and Ethnicity: Russian Colonial Policy
in Turkestan,” in Russia’s Orient.
Jo-Ann Gross, “Historical Memory, Cultural Identity, and
Change: Mirza Abd Al-Aziz Sami’s Representation of the Russian
Conquest of Bukhara,” in Russia’s Orient
*Taras Shevchenko, Kavkaz
|
| Feb.
20 |
The
Mongols and the Rise of Muscovy
Kappeler,
"The Gathering of the Lands of the Golden Horde"
Zenkovsky, "Military Tales" (pp. 193-223)
*Edward Keenan, "Muscovy
and Kazan: Some Introductory Remarks on the Patterns of
Steppe Diplomacy," Slavic Review 26 (1967):
548-58.
Michael Khodarkovsky, "Ignoble Savages and Unfaithful
Subjects: Constructing Non-Christian Identities in Early
Modern Russia" in Russia's Orient.
*George Vernadsky, "Introduction," A History
of Russia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949).
*Filofei, Moscow
as Third Rome
|
| Feb.
25 |
Empire
and Islam
Pushkin, The Captain's Daughter
|
| Feb.
27 |
Muslim
Cities
Ronald Grigor Suny, "Crucible of Ethnic Politics, 1860-1905,"
in The City in Late Imperial Russia
Audrey Altstadt-Mirhadi, "Transformation of a Muslim
Town," in The City in Late Imperial Russia
Adeeb Khalid, "Representations of Russia in Central
Asian Jadid Discourse," in Russia's Orient.
*Azade-Ayse Rorlich, "`The Temptation of the West':
Two Tatar Travellers' Encounters with Europe at the End
of the Nineteenth Century," Central Asian Survey
4, no. 3 (1985): 39-58.
|
|
Unit
3. St. Petersburg/Petrograd/ Leningrad
|
| March
4 |
Petersburg
Today: The Tricentennial
*Blair Ruble,
Leningrad (selection)
Boym, "St. Petersburg, the Cosmopolitan Province"
|
| March
6 |
Imperial
Petersburg
Kappeler, "The Pre-Modern Russian Multi-ethnic Empire"
Yury Slezkine, "Naturalists versus Nations: Eighteenth-Century
Russian Scholars Confront Ethnic Diversity," in Russia's
Orient
*Alexander Pushkin, The Blackamoor of Peter the Great
(selection)
|
| March
11 |
Literary
Petersburg
*Burton
Pike, "The City as Image"
*Alexander Pushkin, The
Bronze Horseman and Eugene
Onegin
(Book One)
*Nikolai Gogol, "The Overcoat"
Opera: Queen of Spades
|
| March
13 |
Late
Imperial Petersburg
*Walter Benjamin, "Paris,
Capital of the 19th Century," Reflections
James Bater, "Between Old and New: St. Petersburg in
the Late Imperial Era," in The City in Late Imperial
Russia
Kappeler, Chapter 8 (The Late Tsarist Multi-Ethnic Empire
between Modernization and Tradition"), The Russian
Empire.
*Richard Wortman, "Moscow and Petersburg: The Problem
of Political Center in Tsarist Russia, 1881-1914,"
in Sean Wilentz, ed., Rites of Rulers: Symbolism, Ritual
and Politics since the Middle Ages
Ballet: Sleeping Beauty
|
|
Spring
Break March 15-23
|
| March
25 |
Dostoevsky's
Petersburg
Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
|
| March
27 |
Petrograd/Leningrad
Daniel R. Brower, "Urban Revolution in the Late Russian
Empire," in The City in Late Imperial Russia,
319-54.
*Andrei Bely, Petersburg, prologue and chapter one
*Alexander Blok, "The
Scythians" and The
Twelve
*Blair Ruble, Leningrad
(selections);
*Cynthia Simmons and Nina Perlina, eds., Writing the
Siege of Leningrad (selections)
|
|
Unit
4. Odesa/Odessa: Jews in the Empire
|
| April
1 |
Odessa
today
Reid, "The Russia Sea: Donetsk and Odessa," "A
Meaningless Fragment: Chernivtsi," and "The Vanished
Nation: Ivano-Frankivsk"
Frederick W. Skinner, "Odessa and the Problem of Urban
Modernization," in The City in Late Imperial Russia
|
| April
3 |
Jews
in Russia
Stephen D. Corrsin, "Warsaw: Poles and Jews in a Conquered
City," in The City in Late Imperial Russia
Kappeler, "The National Challenge," "The
Reaction of the State: Policy on Nationalities, 1831-1904,"
"The Nationalities Question and the Revolution."
*Steven J. Zipperstein, The Jews of Odessa: A Cultural
History, 1794-1881 (selection).
*Hans Rogger, "The Beilis Case: Antisemitism and Politics
in the Reign of Nicholas II," in Jewish Policies
and Right-wing Politics in Imperial Russia, pp. 40-55.
|
| April
8 |
Sholom
Aleichem's Odessa
Guest lecturer: Jeremy Dauber
Sholem Aleichem, The letters of Menakhem-Mendl and Sheyne-Sheyndl
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002)
|
| April
10 |
Babel's
Odessa
Guest lecturer: Rebecca
Stanton
*Isaak
Babel, Odessa Tales
|
|
Unit
5. Moscow and the Modern/Soviet City
|
| April
15 |
Moscow
Today
Boym, "Moscow, the Russian Rome"
*Timothy Colton, Moscow (Introductions and selections)
Kappeler, "Aftermath: Change and Continuity in the
Soviet Multi-ethnic Empire"
|
| April
17 |
Building
the Socialist City
Joseph Bradley, "Moscow: From Big Village to Late Imperial
Metropolis," in The City in Late Imperial Russia,
9-43.
*Michel Foucault, "Of
Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias"
*James Bater, The Soviet city : ideal and reality
(selections)
*Walter Benjamin, Moscow 1927
*Slava Papernyi, Kultura II (selection)
*Mikhail Bulgakov, "Housing crisis in 1920s,"
in Notes on the cuff and other stories (Ann Arbor:
Ardis, 1991).
|
| April
22 |
Stalin's
and Bulgakov's Moscow
Mikhail
Bulgakov, Master and Margarita
|
| April
24 |
Magnitogorsk
John Scott, Behind the Urals
Reid, "The Great Hunger: Matussiv and Lukovytsya"
and "The Empire Explodes: Chernobyl"
|
|
Unit
6. Brighton Beach: City, Empire, Diaspora
|
| April
29 |
City
and Diaspora
*George
Steiner, "The City Under Attack"
*Marc Raeff, Russia Abroad (Introduction, Ch. 1)
Svetlana Boym, "Exiles and Imagined Homelands"
*Homi Bhabha, "Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence
of Colonial Discourse"
October, 28 (Spring 1984): 125-33;
*Joseph Brodsky, "Flight from Byzantium," Less
Than One
*Saskia Sassen, "A New Geography of Centers and Margins:
Summary and Implications"
|
| May
1 |
Brighton
Beach Today |
|
|
|
|
|
Unless
otherwise specified, all films
will be shown in Room 1219 IAB at The Harriman Institute.
January
1/30
@ 6:30pm: The Cigarette Girl of Mosselprom, 1924
(Moscow), 78 min.
Directed by Yuri Andreevich Zhelyabuzhsky (1888-1955)
1920s NEP-era Moscow is the stage for this romantic comedy.
Zina is a beautiful cigarette girl who gets discovered by
a cameraman named Latugin--and becomes an actress. Latugin
loves Zina. An American businessman, MacBride, also loves
Zina. The Russian accountant Mitiushin ALSO loves Zina.
But Zina loves Latugin and Anna loves Mitiushin, and ...
and complications ensue.
1/31
@ 1pm: Ivan the Terrible, Part I, 1943, 96 min;
Part II, 1946, 88 min
Directed by Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (1898-1948)
Stalin 'the Terrible' special-ordered these films from Eisenstein,
which alternate between the exteriors of the siege of Kazan
to the shadowy, expressionistic interiors of the Kremlin.
A pair of epic films on the bloody struggle for power and
its tragic consequences; some consider the sets and acting
to be the best of any of Eisenstein's films--and Part 2
marks the first appearance of color sequence in Eisenstein's
oeuvre... 1/31@1 pm Eisenstein, Ivan the Terrible, Part
One, 1943, 96 min Part Two, 1946, 88 min Ivan the Terrible
(Part 1, 1944; Part 2, 1946) Directed by Sergei Mikhailovich
Eisenstein (1898-1948) Stalin 'the Terrible' special-ordered
these films from Eisenstein, which alternate between the
exteriors of the siege of Kazan to the shadowy, expressionistic
interiors of the Kremlin. A pair of epic films on the bloody
struggle for power and its tragic consequences; some consider
the sets and acting to be the best of any of Eisenstein's
films--and Part 2 marks the first appearance of color sequence
in Eisenstein's oeuvre...
February
2/13
@ 6:30pm: The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in
the Land of the Bolsheviks, 1924, 78 min
Directed by Lev Kuleshov (1899-1970)
2/20
@ 6:30pm: Battleship Potemkin, 1925 (Odessa), 74
min.
Directed by Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (1898-1948)
2/28
@ 1pm: Pudovkin, The End of St. Petersburg, 1927,
88 min.
Directed by Vsevolod Ilarionovich Pudovkin (1893-1953)
2/28@
3pm: Brother, 1997 (St. Petersburg), 96 min.
Directed by Aleksei Balabanov (1959-)
March
3/6
@ 6:30pm: October, 1927 (Petersburg), 104 min.
Directed by Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (1898-1948)
3/7
@ 1pm: Bed and Sofa, 1926 (Moscow), 100 min.
Directed by Abram Room (1894-1976)
3/13
@ 6:30pm: Man with a Movie Camera, 1928 (Moscow,
Kiev, etc.), 86 min.
Directed by Dziga Vertov (1896-1954)
3/14@1pm:
Twelve Chairs, 1971 (Odessa), 153 min., in Russian
Directed by Leonid Gaidai (1923-1993)
3/27
@ 6:30pm: Arsenal, 1928 (Kiev), 70 min.
Directed by Aleksandr Dovzhenko (1894-1956)
3/28
@ 1pm: Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears (1979),
115 min.
Directed by Vladimir Menshov (1939-)
April
4/11
@ 1pm: The Overcoat, 1959 (St. Petersburg),
73 min.
Directed by Aleksei Batalov (1928-)
4/11
@ 3pm: Ashik Kerib, 1988 (Tbilisi), 75 min.
Directed by Sergei Paradjanov (1924-1990
4/17
@ 6:30pm: The Lady with the Dog, 1959 (Yalta, Saratov,
Moscow), 86 min.
Directed by Iosif Heifitz (1905-1995)
4/18
@ 1pm: Window to Paris, 1995 (St. Petersburg),
92 min.
Directed by Yuri Mamin (1946-)
4/24
@ 6:30pm in Room 717, Hamilton Hall:
The Cranes Are Flying, 1957 (Moscow), 94 min
Directed by Mikhail Kalatozov (1903-1973)
4/25
@ 1pm: Prisoner of the Mountains, 1996 (Caucasus),
99 min.
Directed by Sergei Bodrov (1948-)
May
5/2
@ 6:30pm: A Friend of the Deceased, 1998 (Kiev),
100 min.
Directed by Vyacheslav Krishtofovich (1947-)
|
|