FALL 2018 SCHEDULE OF READINGS AND ASSIGNMENTS

Introduction: Nature—Culture—Russia

August 29 Introduction to the course
Ecocriticism, the Russian landscape, and associated riddles of Russian national identity
Mikhail Lermontov, “My Native Land”: Fyodor Tyutchev, “How Bare the Countryside…”; Alexander Blok, “Russia (Even sleeping you astonish me…)”

September 3 The 19th-century Romantic sublime
Alexander Pushkin, “The Poet,” “Echo,” “Autumn”
Mikhail Lermontov, “A Sail,” “Clouds,” “The Cliff,” “Lone I Walk at Night”
Fyodor Tyutchev, “Spring Storm,” “Silentium!,” “Night Wind,” “How bare the countryside!…,” “In early autumn sweetly wistful…”
Paintings by Isaak Levitan and Aleksei Savrasov

September 5 The 20th-century nostalgic pastoral
Ivan Bunin, “The Scent of Apples”
Tatiana Tolstaya, “On the Golden Porch”
Boris Pasternak, “Sister My Life,” “Hey, you in the wind…,” “The Steppe,” “Summer”
Nikolai Zabolotsky, “Snakes,” “Morning Song,” “All that the soul contained…,” “A Woodland Lake”
Paintings by Isaak Brodsky

The Primeval Russian Forest

September 10 The Russian forest in folklore, art, film, and poetry
Fairtytales: “Prince Ivan and the Gray Wolf,” “Vasilisa the Beautiful,” “Ivanko the Bear’s Son”
Film: Hedgehog in the Fog (directed by Yuri Norstein, 1975; 10 min.)
Nikolai Zabolotsky, “Trees,” “In This Birch Wood,” “The Forest Lodge”
Paintings and illustrations by Ivan Shishkin, Ilya Repin, and Ivan Bilibin

September 12 The Russian forest and its creatures in 19th- and 20th-century short fiction
Leo Tolstoy, “The Bear Hunt”
Lidia Zinovieva-Annibal, “Wolves” and “The Bear Cubs”
Ivan Bunin, “Wolves”
Andrei Platonov, “Among Animals and Plants”
Vasily Shukshin, “Wolves”

September 17 Forest as metaphor, idea, and value
Brief overview of the history of environmentalism in Russia (late Imperial and Soviet periods)
Anton Chekhov, Uncle Vanya
Nikolai Zabolotsky, “Art,” “Signs of Autumn”
Optional film: Uncle Vanya (directed by Andrei Konchalovsky, 1970; 99 min.)

September 19 Challenges of environmental activism in contemporary Russia
Kate Pride Brown, “State Suppression of Baikal Activism”
Note: This class will be guest-taught by Laura Henry, Associate Professor of Government & Legal Studies (and a specialist on the politics of environmentalism in post-Soviet Russia)

The Russian Countryside and the Peasant Village

September 24 Social commentary in 19th-century depictions of nature and peasants
Alexander Pushkin, “Winter in the Country,” “When lost in thought…”
Ivan Turgenev, “Bezhin Meadow,” “The Singers,” “The Rendezvous,” “Forest and Steppe”
Paintings by Aleksei Venetsianov

September 26 The countryside and village life in times of change
Alexander Engelgardt, excerpt from Letters from the Country
Alexander Blok, “Autumn Day”
Sergei Esenin, selected poems (especially “Hey there, Russia, mother country…,” “Land of mine in dire neglect…,” “Song about a Dog,” “The Hooligan,” “It can’t be dispelled…,” “The disquiet of vaporous moonshine…”)
Nikolai Kliuev, selected poems (especially “O fir, weaver of lace-in-thickets…,” “Do not fear the falling of leaves…,” “My white linden has dropped its blossoms…,” “Snow falls on the road…”)
Andrei Platonov, “The Motherland of Electricity”

October 1 The village in Soviet fiction and film under Stalin
Andrei Platonov, “The Cow”
Film fragments: Bezhin Meadow (directed by Sergei Eisenstein, 1937; 26 min.)
Film: Cossacks of the Kuban (directed by Ivan Pyr’ev, 1949; 104 min.)

October 3 The village in Soviet prose of the Thaw period
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “Matryona’s Homestead”
Vasily Shukshin, “Gogol and Raika,” “Harvesting”

The Domestic Exotic (on the Southern and Eastern Peripheries of Empire)

October 10 The Caucasian wilds in the Russian literary imagination
Alexander Pushkin, “Sing not, my love…,” “The Hills of Georgia”
Mikhail Lermontov, “Farewell to Russia,” “A Dream,” “Tamara”
Ivan Bunin, “Caucasus”
Leo Tolstoy, The Cossacks, chapters I-XVI
Paintings by Arkhip Kuindzhi

October 15 The Caucasian wilds in the Russian literary imagination, continued
Leo Tolstoy, The Cossacks, chapters XVII-XLII

October 17 Nature and culture in the Russian Arctic
Yuri Rytkheu, A Dream in Polar Fog, chapters 1-10

October 22 Nature and culture in the Russian Arctic, continued
Yuri Rytkheu, A Dream in Polar Fog, chapters 11-20

October 24 Nature and culture in the Russian Arctic, continued
Yuri Rytkheu, A Dream in Polar Fog, chapters 21-30

October 29 Russian fantasies of the Asian steppe
Alexander Blok, “On the Field of Kulikovo” (parts I-V), “Russia and I”
Film: Urga: Close to Eden (directed by Nikita Mikhalkov, 1991; 119 min.)

Calamities of Ice and Water

October 31 Winter in pre-Revolutionary fiction and poetry
Alexander Pushkin, “The Snowstorm”
Leo Tolstoy, “Master and Man”
Vladimir Korolenko, “The Cold”
Alexander Blok, “Caught by the Blizzard,” “O what is the setting sun’s radiance…”

November 5 Winter in Soviet-era fiction, memoir, and poetry
Evgeny Zamyatin, “The Cave”
Nikolai Zabolotsky, “Winter’s Start”
Lydia Ginzburg, excerpt from Blockade Diary

November 7 Storms and cold in the Gulag and its aftermath
Varlaam Shalamov, “A Pushover Job,” “A Child’s Drawings,” “Lend-Lease”
Nikolai Zabolotsky, “Night Garden,” “Thunderstorm,” “The North”

November 12 Apocalyptic floods and social critique
Alexander Pushkin, The Bronze Horseman
Evgeny Zamyatin, “The Flood”

November 14 Legendary Russian waters
Film: Rusalka (The Mermaid) (directed by Alexander Petrov, 1996; 10 min.)
Vladimir Korolenko, “Svetloyar”
Valentin Rasputin, “Baikal”
Paintings by Ivan Aivazovsky

Soviet Aspirations and Environmental Disasters

November 19 The Soviet project: old world and new world
Vladimir Mayakovsky, selected poems (especially “Could You?” “Me,” “Love,” “Vladimir Mayakovsky Rented a Dacha One Summer”)
Nikolai Zabolotsky, “The Mad Wolf,” “I do not look for harmony…”
Film: Magnitogorsk: Forging the New Man (directed by Pieter Jan Smit, 1996; 60 min.)

November 26 Harnessing the waters with slave labor
Maxim Gorky, et al., excerpts from Belomor: An Account of the Construction of the New Canal between the White Sea and the Baltic Sea
Visit to Bowdoin Museum of Art to view The Belomor Canal, issue #12 of USSR in Construction

November 28 The Chernobyl disaster
Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl, parts 1-2

December 3 The Chernobyl disaster, continued
Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl, part 3
Film: The Babushkas of Chernobyl (directed by Holly Morris, 2015; 70 min.)

December 5 Post-Soviet decay and corruption, and course conclusion
Viktor Pelevin, “Vera Pavlovna’s Ninth Dream”
Film: Leviathan (directed by Andrei Zviagintsev, 2014; 142 min.)