This course explores the literary and visual culture that emerged in post-Soviet societies following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Students will learn how literature and cinema transformed during a period of dramatic and even traumatic change, in the context of intense debates over national identity, the relationship to the socialist past, and the inter-relations of art, politics and commerce. While our focus will be on the literature, cinema and popular culture of post-Soviet Russia, we will also consider texts and films produced in other post-Soviet spaces: Ukraine, Armenia, and Central Asia.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 brought to an end the world’s first experiment in state socialism. Over the subsequent decades, the societies that emerged from the Soviet collapse embarked on a complex and often chaotic process of economic and social transformation. This course explores the cultural forms that emerged from this period of dramatic and even traumatic change. How does culture respond to such moments of extreme transformation? How have post-socialist societies responded to the rise of a newly commercialized and globalized cultural market? How have new forms of national identity taken shape across the post-Soviet space? How do post-Soviet writers and film-makers relate to the Soviet past: as a source of trauma, or as a lost utopia and site of nostalgic longing? What new relationships between cultural expression, performance, and state power have taken shape in post-Soviet societies? The class will explore these questions through a selection of literature, cinema, and popular culture from a series of post-Soviet spaces: Russia, Ukraine, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. In the final section of the class, we will consider the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war and its implications for our understanding of the “post-Soviet” and of the role of culture in response to war.

Taught in English: No knowledge of Russian or other regional languages required.

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.

Requirements class fulfills