Contemporary Russian Literature and Media Dr. Susanna Weygandt

The aim of this graduate student course is to introduce students to signature literary and cultural texts from roughly the post-Stalin era to the present. The quintessential trends of Russian literature and culture of the past few decades appear to be the collapse of Soviet identity, techniques of historicizing the present, the documentary, reassessment of history, social critic, labor and immigration, nostalgia for the great empire, and the recognition of the effects Westernization. Many of these topics connect to late-Soviet dissidence and underground, samizdat, youth culture, and censorship. Therefore, in this course we will discuss the trajectory of literature, culture, and film from post-Stalin through contemporary times, which will feed into our focus on canon formation of contemporary “Russian” literature and culture.

Learning Goals:  Learn about major literary movements in relationship to the political history of their time;

 In addition to reading texts that are considered canonical of ’s contemporary period, we will be attentive to the literary and cultural peripheries (for instance, documentary film, guitar poetry).

 For graduate students taking this course, the aim is to equip graduate students with relevant comparative and theoretical approaches and concerns by reading theoretical texts that provide a framework for analyzing literature and culture of late-Soviet Russia and post-Soviet Russia.

 These combined skills will help graduate students produce, by the end of the course, a research paper structured for publication in a leading journal in the Slavic field.

 There is some new literature that is quintessential of the Russian contemporary period that has not yet completely met the eyes of an English-reading audience. Therefore, this period offers many opportunities for translations. A publication record of translations give graduate students a competitive edge in both academic and non-academic fields. The mid-term assignment for this course focuses on developing professional translation skills.

Week 1. The Thaw and Russia’s Cyclical History: Revolution, Oppression, Thaw, and Stagnation. The Dilemmas of De-Stalinization: Negotiating Cultural and Social Change in the Khrushchev era. Ed. Polly Jones (London: Routledge, 2006). Pages 1 -80. Khrushchev’s Secret Speech

Week 2. The Print Revolution of the Thaw Vladimir Dudintsev, Not by Bread Alone (1957): 9-33, 53-66 Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) Miriam Dobson, “Contesting the Paradigms of De-Stalinization: Readers’ Responses to One Day

1 Susanna Weygandt Late-Soviet and Contemporary Literature and Media syllabus (proposed) in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” Slavic Review, vol.64, no.3 (Autumn 2005), 580-600 Denis Kozlov, “Naming the Social Evil: The Readers of Novyi mir and Vladimir Dudintsev’s Not by Bread Alone,” p. 80-98 in Polly Jones (2006) Film screening: I’m Twenty Years Old / Mne 20 let. Film directed by Marlen Khutsiev (1961)

Week 3. Speech Acts, Knowing Smiles, and Urban Folklore of the Post-Stalin Era Seth Graham, Resonant Dissonance: The Russian Joke in Cultural Context. Chapter 5: “Ethnic Reflexivity” (95-121) Gerald Smith, Song to Seven Strings: from Soviet Mass Songs to Guitar Poetry (1984), excerpt. Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative, Introduction and Chapter 5 “Implicit Censorship and Discursive Agency” (127-164) Rock Akvarium (): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcgywNSTRGE Kino (Viktor Tsoi): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krcqHiiPGy0 Zvuki mu (Petr Mamonov): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOtiDcx1hIs (first 5 min) Rok Posev 1981 (Seva Novgorodtsev): http://seva.ru/rock/?id=158&y=1981 Artemy Troitskii, Back in the USSR: The True Story of Rock in Russia (1988), excerpt.

Week 4. The Conceptualists Alla Rosenfeld and Norton Dodge, eds., From Gulag to Glasnost’: Nonconformist Art from the , 36-63, 303-4, 321-31 Susan E. Reid, “Modernizing Socialist Realism in the Khrushchev Thaw: The Struggle for a ‘Contemporary Style’ in Soviet Art" (2006) Matthew Jackson, The Experimental Group: Ilya Kabakov, Moscow Conceptualism and Soviet Avant-Gardes, p. 133-168 D. A. Prigov, “Policeman”, “The people, are on the one hand understandable …”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2my8S_dwZA

Week 5. Lifted Censorship and Liudmila Petrushevskaia, Tri devushki v golobom /Three Girls in Blue, drama, (1984) Video-recording of performance at Lenkom Theater, directed by Mark Zakharov, 1988 Mikhail Shatrov, Onward…Onward…Onward (drama, 1988) Film Screening: Assa, directed by Sergei Solovev (film, 1987)

Week 6. Delayed Feminism Helena Goscilo, “Perestroika or Domostroika: The Construction of Womanhood during Perestroika” in Dehexing Sex: Russian Womanhood during and after Glasnost (1996): 5-20 Natalaia Baranskaia, Hedelia kak nedelia / A Week Like Any Other (1968) Svetlana Alexievich, War’s Unwomanly Face, 1987.

2 Week 7. Nostalgia for Empire and Footprints in the Snow Memory and Theory in E Europe, ed. Alex Etkind Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, p. 57-71 A featured article from Alexander Etkind’s Memory at War project site: http://www.memoryatwar.org/resources-newsletter

Week 8. Post-Soviet Transition Serguei Oushakine, “In the State of Post-Soviet Aphasia: Symbolic Development in Contemporary Russia,” Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 52, No. 6 (Sept 2000), pp. 991-1016. ---, “We’re Nostalgic but We’re not Crazy: Retrofitting the Past in Russia,” The Russian Review 66 (July 2007): 451–82. Olga Shevchenko, “Introduction: Living on a Volcano” from Crisis and the Everyday in Postsocialist Moscow (2009), p. 1-15.

Week 9. Russia after the Collapse of the Soviet Union Viktor Pelevin Generation 'P' (Russian)/ Homo Zapiens (English). Translated by Andrew Bromfield, New York: Penguin Books, 2006 [cf. the UK edition: Babylon, London : Faber and Faber, 2000]. Peter Pomerantsev, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia, 2015.

Week 10. The Documentary Moment Elena Gremina and Mikhail Ugarov, September.doc. In Forward Russia! New Dramas and Manifestos for the 21st-Century. Eds. Maksim Hanukai and Susanna Weygandt, Columbia UP, 2019 (Russian text available) Elizabeth Papazian, Manufacturing Truth: The Documentary Moment in Early Soviet Culture (2008) Film screening: Chastnye khroniki. Monolog / Private Chronicles. Monologue. Documentary film directed by Vitaly Manskii, 1999.

Week 11. The Documentary and Social Activism in Contemporary Poetry Andrei Rodionov, Zverinyi stil’ / Zoomorphic Ornament (NLO, 2013) Roman Osminkin, Not a Word about Politics! (Cicada Press) A. Radionov and E. Limonov, poetry session: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLm94jloSic Bykov, Poet-Grazhdanin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e0HcvFt_Ng Arkady Kots: “Walls” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3X36Xqd9cw,

3 Susanna Weygandt Late-Soviet and Contemporary Literature and Media syllabus (proposed) and “Nothing Will Work out without Love”: https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=pFYLYTUxu4U

Week 12. New Realism Roman Senchin, “Idzhim,” translated by Lisa Hayden Espenschade in Read. Russia! An Anthology of New Voices, ed. Elena Schubin. New York: Overlook Press, 2012. (Text available in Russian) Film screening: Silent Souls / Ovsyanki (film, 2010), dir. Aleksey Fedorchenko and written by Denis Osokin

Week 13. Standing up to Unforgiving Power Edith Clowers, Chapter 2: “Postmodernist Empire Meets Holy Rus’” in Russia on the Edge: Imagined Geographies and Post-Socialist Identity (Cornell UP, 2011). This chapter discusses ‘conciliary authoritarianism’, or people giving into authoritarian structure of rule. Hobbes’s Leviathan Film screening: Andrey Zvyagintsev: Leviathan (2014). (Online, with English subtitles: https://my-hit.org/film/361934/)

Week 14. Female Writers Historicize the Present Alisa Ganieva, “Salam Tebe, Dalgat!” In Squaring the Circle: Short Stories by Winners of the Debut Prize (Evanston: Northwestern UP), 2010. Available in Russian. Victoria Lomasko, “The Khimki Truckers’ Camp Readies Itself for Nationwide a Strike,” The Russian Reader, 16 February 2016 (subtitles of drawings available in English and Russian.)

Oral Presentations Each student will be expected to present on two of the assigned cultural works at some point during the course of the semester (thus, giving two presentations). Presentations are 20-minutes long. The idea is figure out what makes the particular text(s) at hand tick, and to introduce to the class the historical background and theoretical concepts of the assigned reading that you find most salient or helpful.

Mid-term Choose an author from this syllabus and research his/her portfolio for an item (short story, narrative poem, or several poems, or open editorial article by the author) that hasn’t been translated. Translate 15 pages (single-spaced) of that item. If you select poetry, please consult with me, and we’ll agree upon a number of poems to translate. Students will share and workshop their translations at a time in class as well.

Final Assignment

4 A research paper of ca. 25 pages (double-spaced) due at the end of the term, about a topic that builds upon a question or debate raised in the readings of the course syllabi. The aim is to write about a topic that would allow your paper to be publishable. Please meet with me during my office hours to discuss your topic ahead of time.

5 Susanna Weygandt Late-Soviet and Contemporary Literature and Media syllabus (proposed)