RUSS 298
The Caucasus and Captive Imagination
Spring 2025
Division I
D Difference, Power, and Equity
Class Details
This course is about the Caucasus as a real place in the modern imagination – a place often defined by conflict and unfulfilled desires to escape. This ancient and culturally diverse mountain range (medieval Arabic travelers called it “the mountain of languages”) marked the boundary between Europe and Asia in antiquity. It was the mythological home of Medea and the place of Prometheus’ punishment. Keeping this background in mind, we will begin our study of the Caucasus in the modern imagination by reading 19th century Russian classics (Pushkin, Lermontov, and Tolstoy) in whose works the Caucasus appears as a “frontier” for exploring questions of freedom, oppression, and the boundaries between the strange and familiar. As we set these works in their historical context (i.e., the Russian conquest of the Caucasus and contemporary developments in Western European literature), we will compare them to responses by native Caucasian writers of the period. In particular, we will question the relationship between literature, national awareness, imperialism, and revolt: What role did the Caucasus play in the formation of Russian literature? How did this literature serve the Russian imperial project? How did it express resistance? How did non-Russian authors, whose literary traditions sometimes predated written Russian, imagine their place in these events? To bring our study to bear on the region’s present and future, we will also study how the Soviet imagination affected this land and its peoples through representative works of literature and film and how contemporary writers respond to this legacy in the context of Chechnya and Karabakh. All readings will be in English.
The Class:
Format: seminar
Limit: 25
Expected: 20
Class#: 4005
Grading: no pass/fail option, no fifth course option
Limit: 25
Expected: 20
Class#: 4005
Grading: no pass/fail option, no fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation:
Students will buy 5-6 books and pick up a course packet. Students will write several short response papers, short papers (3-5 pages), and complete one larger project (10-15 pages).
Prerequisites:
None
Enrollment Preferences:
Students in the Russian Department
Distributions:
Divison I
Difference, Power, and Equity
DPE Notes:
This course will treat the history of the imperial conquest of the Caucasus and the role that literature played within it by looking at the Russian use of orientalist rhetoric as well as how that rhetoric was subverted by Russian and non-Russian authors. We will study how Russian writers, who were sent to the Caucuses for political offenses, nevertheless supported the imperial conquest. Finally, we will look at post-Soviet nationalism and Neo-Imperial projects.
Class Grid
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RUSS 298 - 01 (S) SEM Russian Lit: The Caucasus
RUSS 298 - 01 (S) SEM Russian Lit: The CaucasusDivision I D Difference, Power, and EquityMR 2:35 pm - 3:50 pm
4005OpenNone