Love and Sex in Russian Literature and Culture

First-Year Seminar - Russian 017

Spring 2012

Mondays, 1:15-4:00
Kohlberg 318

Sibelan Forrester
Kohlberg 340
office 610-328-8162
e-mail sforres1@swarthmore.edu
home page www.swarthmore.edu/Humanities/sforres1/

Office Hours:
Monday 11:00-12:00
Tuesday 10:00-11:00
Wednesday 11:00-12:00
...or by appointment

Our course WA is Dan Stuart, e-mail dstuart1
Swarthmore Writing Program site: www.swarthmore.edu/x9311.xml

Assignments | Readings | Syllabus | Course Blog

Though best known for its political priorities, religious intensity, and philosophical depth, Russian literature has also devoted many words to two other eternal human concerns, love and sex. In this course we will read significant and provocative tales, poems, stories and novels, created over many centuries, analyzing and discussing how they represent and construct these most "natural" impulses -- and, of course, how they imagine the relationship of human attraction to philosophy, politics and religion.

Course assignments:

  1. Regular attendance is essential in a class that meets only once a week! If you have to miss class, let me know as soon as you can, and make sure you get information on what you missed from me or from a classmate. Your grade will reflect your participation (see below).
  2. Every week, post about two pages of comments, notes or questions on the week's readings to the course blog. These can include ideas for papers or further readings, comments on other people’s posts, things you'd like to discuss in class or communicate to everyone without saying in class. Please read the blog and make your post by Sunday evening of each week. If you prefer (always or occasionally) to send or hand me two pages of notes as a word document, rather than post on the blog, these are due at the end of each class meeting. I will return any paper/Word notes (with comments/replies) the following week. Blog posts / notes will be graded as part of your participation.
  3. Seminar presentation: Present one work from the list below of relevant works that we will NOT read in class. In fifteen to twenty minutes, outline plot, style, major issues; point out the relation to/differences from works or theories we have been talking about. Consult with instructor to select a work and schedule the presentation; appropriate items not on my list below are fine, pending approval.
  4. First writing assignment: A three to four-page (double-spaced) paper laying out your own opinions of love and sex. This may be very personal, or you may concentrate on messages received from society, the media, family, gender studies scholarship, etc. Explore patterns that emerge; note your sources for ideas. This will give me a kind of benchmark for your writing, and it will resurface on the final examination. Due January 30.
  5. Second writing assignment: A five-page paper on one of our readings. Choose one that lets you say interesting things. If you wish, I can distribute a list of sample topics ahead of time. Rough draft due February 13; meet with our WA; final draft due February 27.
  6. Third writing assignment: A book review of one of our readings (literary or scholarly), or a short story (or long poem? short play? elaborate poster, creative web site?) based on issues from our readings that interest you. Write 2-5 pages (a story should probably be longer than a book review).
    If you decide to write a book review, then it should be something we're reading for class, or something on my list of literary or scholarly resources. (If you find something that isn't, check with me.)
    If you decide to write a creative work, then it should deal with gender and sexuality: I suggest picking a work you enjoyed and writing the next chapter, or a deleted episode, or two of the characters meet in heaven (or not!), or you bring together two characters from different works and have them express their worldviews to each other.
    Due March 19.
  7. Fourth writing assignment: A ten-page paper that applies other scholarly resources to a work or works we read for class. Besides writing this one, you'll read the draft of someone else in class and give comments, while getting comments back from someone in the class as well as our WA. One-page outline due March 26; first draft due April 9; meet with your classmate(s) and our WA; final draft due April 23.
  8. The final examination will be a three-hour take-home, availanble after the last class meeting, with a short answer section and an essay section (where you'll choose from among several questions).
Course grade (for those who like the numerical break-down):

Required texts (for sale in Bookstore):

Nikolai Leskov, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and Other Stories
Evdokia Nagrodskaia, The Wrath of Dionysus
Yuri Olesha, Envy
Karolina Pavlova, A Double Life
Irina Reyn, What Happened to Anna K.
Lev Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata
Ivan Turgenev, First Love
Julia Voznesenskaya, The Women's Decameron

Some readings are out of print and will be on reserve or on the course Moodle page. Let me know if you have trouble getting hold of any texts. I've asked the library to put copies of all the required texts on Reserve.

Works for further reading or for your seminar presentations:

Useful additional or background readings (in library):

  1. Eliyana Adler, In Her Hands: The Education of Jewish Girls in Tsarist Russia LC3585. R8 A34 2011 (at Bryn Mawr)
  2. Aleksandr Afanas'ev, Russian Secret Tales: Bawdy Folktales of Old Russia GR202 .A6613 1998
  3. Joe Andrew, Women in Russian Literature, 1780-1863 PG3013.5 .W6 A53 1988
  4. Lynne Attwood, The New Soviet Man and Woman: Sex-Role Socialization in the USSR HQ1075.5 .S65 A88 1990
  5. Adele Marie Barker, ed., Consuming Russia: Popular Culture, Sex and Society Since Gorbachev DK510.762 .C66 1999
  6. Peter I. Barta, Lindsay Hughes, John T. Alexander, Andreas Schonle, Gender and Sexuality in Russian Civilization HQ1075.5.R8 G46 2001 (at Bryn Mawr)
  7. Laurie Bernstein, Sonia’s Daughters: Prostitutes and Their Regulation in Imperial Russia HQ215 .B47 1995
  8. Robin Bisha et al., eds., Russian Women, 1698-1917: Experience and Expression, an Anthology of Sources HQ1662 .R877 2002
  9. Eliot Borenstein, Men Without Women: Masculinity and Revolution in Russian Fiction, 1917-1929 PG3096.M45 B67 2000
  10. Angela Brintlinger and Ilya Iu. VInitsky, eds., Madness and the Mad in Russian Culture DK32 .M33 2007
  11. Mary Buckley, ed., Post-Soviet Women: from the Baltic to Central Asia HQ1665.15 .P67 1997
  12. Barbara Evans Clements, Barbara Alpern Engel, and Christine D. Worobec, eds., Russia's Women: Accommodation, Resistance, Transformation (at Haverford, and on Reserve for History 128)
  13. Jane T. Costlow, Stephanie Sandler and Judith Bowles, eds., Sexuality and the Body in Russian Culture HQ18.R9 S49 1993
  14. Laura Engelstein, The Keys to Happiness: Sex and the Search for Modernity in Fin-de-Siècle Russia HQ18.S65 E54 1992
  15. Cynthia Enloe, The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War HQ1233 .E55 1993
  16. Laurie Essig, Queer in Russia: A Story of Sex, Self and the Other HQ76.3.R8 E85 1999
  17. GLAS: New Russian Writing, 13. A Will and a Way (Arbatova, “My Teachers,” pp. 49-75) PG3213 .G54 v. 13
  18. Rose L. Glickman, Russian Factory Women; Workplace and Society, 1880-1914 HD6068.2.S65 G54 1984
  19. Helena Goscilo, Dehexing Sex: Russian Womanhood During and After Glasnost PG3026.W6 G67 1996
  20. Helena Goscilo, Russian and Polish Women's Fiction PG3276 .R87 1985
  21. Helena Goscilo and Andrea Lanoux, eds., Gender and National Identity in Twentieth-Century Russian Culture HQ1075.5.S65 G45 2006
  22. Dan Healey, Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia: The Regulation of Sex and Gender Dissent HQ76.3.S653 H42 2001
  23. Joanna Hubbs, Mother Russia: The Feminine Myth in Russian Culture BL940.S65 H83 1988
  24. Catriona Kelly, A History of Russian Women's Writing, 1820-1992 PG2997 .K45 1994
  25. Igor Kon, The Sexual Revolution in Russia: From the Age of the Czars to Today HQ18.R9 K66 1995
  26. Igor Kon and James Riordan, eds., Sex and Russian Society HQ18.S65 S46 1993
  27. Mikhail Kuzmin, Selected Prose and Poetry (includes a different translation of Wings, pp. 1-110) PG3467 .K93 A244 1980
  28. Eve Levin, Sex and Society in the World of the Orthodox Slavs, 900-1700 HQ18.E852 L48 1989
  29. Fran Markowitz, Coming of Age in Post-Soviet Russia HQ799.R9 M285 2000
  30. Rosalind Marsh. ed., Gender and Russian Literature: New Perspectives PG2997 .R86 1996 (at Bryn Mawr)
  31. Rosalind Marsh, ed., Women and Russian Culture: Projections and Self-Perceptions PG3026.W6 W64 1998
  32. Olga Matich, Erotic Eutopia: The Decadent Imagination in Russia's Fin de Siècle PG3020.5 .D43 M38 2005
  33. Eric Naiman, Sex in Public: The Incarnation of Early Soviet Ideology DK266 .N22 1997
  34. Temira Pachmuss, ed., Women Writers in Russian Modernism: An Anthology PG3213 .W6
  35. Irina Paert, Old Believers: Religious Dissent and Gender in Russia, 1760-1850 BX601 .P22 2003
  36. Jenifer Presto, Beyond the Flesh: Alexander Blok, Zinaida Gippius. and the Symbolist Sublimation of Sex PG3453.B6 Z69575 2008
  37. Alexander Pushkin, "Ruslan and Liudmila" PG3347 .R85 A7
  38. Rochelle Goldberg Ruthchild, Equality and Revolution: Women's Rights in the Russian Empire, 1905-1917 HQ1236.5 R8 R88 2010
  39. Catherine A. Schuler, Women in Russian Theater: The Actress in the Silver Age PN2727 .S38 1996
  40. Isolde Thyrêt, Between God and Tsar: Religious Symbolism and the Royal Women of Muscovite Russia DK100 .T48 2001
  41. Olga Semyonova Tian-Shanskaia, Village Life in Late Tsarist Russia HN523 .S46 1993

SYLLABUS:

WEEK 1
Jan. 16 - intro; broad sweep of history; folklore; Russian and Soviet Puritanism
Fairytales (Afanas'ev): handouts (also on Moodle)

Reading for Week 2: Anonymous, "The Tale of Peter and Fevronia;" Anonymous, "Frol Skobeev;" Pushkin, "Ruslan and Liudmila," on Moodle
WEEK 2
Jan 23 - orality in written culture; clerical misogyny; the emerging literary tradition

Reading for Week 3: Karamzin, "Poor Liza;" poems by Zhukovskii, Pushkin, Pavlova, Rostopchina, Tiutchev, Lermontov, Fet, on Moodle
WEEK 3
Jan 30 - Sentimentalism, Romanticism, lyric poetry, the Muse
FIRST PAPER DUE

Reading for Week 4: Evdokiia Rostopchina, "Rank and Money," on Moodle; Karolina Pavlova, A Double Life
WEEK 4
Feb. 6 - Society Tales

Reading for Week 5: Turgenev, First Love
WEEK 5
Feb. 13 - Realism
ROUGH DRAFT OF SECOND PAPER DUE

Reading for Week 6: Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata
WEEK 6
Feb. 20 - More Realism; the writer as moral authority

Reading for Week 7: Leskov, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk; Maxim Gorky, "Twenty-Six Men and a Girl," on Moodle
WEEK 7
Feb 27 - Later nineteenth-century Realism; non-aristocratic writers
SECOND PAPER DUE

SPRING BREAK!

Reading for Week 8: Nagrodskaya, The Wrath of Dionysus; poems by Briusov, Bal'mont, Gippius, Blok, on Moodle
WEEK 8
March 12 - At last, the decadent fin de siècle! Nagrodskaya; Symbolism

Reading for Week 9: Pushkin, poem to Vigel', on Moodle; Kuzmin, Wings
WEEK 9
March 19 - homoerotic writing
BOOK REVIEW OR CREATIVE PROJECT DUE

Reading for Week 10: lyric poetry by Parnok, Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Pasternak, Maiakovskii, Mandelshtam, on Moodle
WEEK 10
March 26 - Modernist poetry
ONE-PAGE OUTLINE OF FINAL PAPER DUE; schedule appointment with instructor

Reading for Week 11: Olesha, Envy
WEEK 11
April 2 - Sex and Revolution

Reading for Week 12: Voznesenskaia, The Women's Decameron
WEEK 12
 April 9 - Love and Sex in the Soviet Era
ROUGH DRAFT OF FINAL PAPER DUE

Reading for Week 13: Maria Arbatova, "My Teachers;" Vadim Kalinin, "The Unbelievable and Tragic History of Misha Strikov and His Cruel Wife," on Moodle
WEEK 13
April 16 - Late Soviet, early post-Soviet sexualities

Reading for Week 14: Irina Reyn, What Happened to Anna K.
WEEK 14
April 23 - Russian sexuality moves abroad – and isn't just Russian
FINAL PAPER DUE; also hand in comments from the person in class who read your paper

Your (three-hour, take-home) final examination will be posted on Moodle after the last class meeting. It is due May 14.