HIST 141
Modernism, Leisure, and Subjectivity in Fin-de-Siècle Russia
Last Offered Fall 2008
Division II Writing Skills
This course is not offered in the current catalog

This course introduces students to the artistic movements, everyday life, and socio-cultural upheavals of urban Russia in the fin-de-siècle (1881 to 1914). The fast-paced, consumer-oriented modern city, with its celebrities, fashions, and technological wonders, gripped the imagination of imperial Russia’s urban denizens. The inhabitants of St. Petersburg and Moscow, conscious of living in a new era, embraced and grappled with the Modern Age as journalists, impresarios, and artists narrated and interpreted it. We will explore the ways revolution and war, industrialization, the commercialization of culture, and new sensibilities about the self and identity were reflected in modernist art and thought, literature, and autobiographical writings. We also will look closely at the realms of elite entertainment and popular amusement in an attempt to relate consumer culture to notions of gender and sexuality, the redefinition of status and privilege, and concepts of leisure. Historians have offered competing explanations of how and why the rapid social, economic and cultural changes of this period contributed to the fall of the Russian monarchy and the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Our primary goal will be to use sources to assess their arguments and, hopefully, make our own. Texts include: historical scholarship, literary works, philosophical and sociological writings, music, visual art, and film.