HISTORY OF THE RUSSIAN CULTURE
- Academic year
- 2022/2023 Syllabus of previous years
- Official course title
- STORIA DELLA CULTURA RUSSA
- Course code
- LT2100 (AF:330921 AR:207654)
- Modality
- On campus classes
- ECTS credits
- 6
- Degree level
- Bachelor's Degree Programme
- Educational sector code
- L-LIN/21
- Period
- 1st Semester
- Course year
- 3
- Where
- VENEZIA
- Moodle
- Go to Moodle page
Contribution of the course to the overall degree programme goals
Expected learning outcomes
● Acquisition with the Russian culture in the formative period of Russian history of the 20th century, key approaches and major sources.
● Familiarization with the diverse corpus of texts from diaries and memoirs to official historical records and biographies, from films and visual art to literary texts both in Stalin and post-Stalin periods.
● Understanding of the most important methodological approaches to Soviet history (Sovietological, revisionist, post-revisionist).
● Development of cultural awareness, critical analysis, creative thinking and intellectual independence.
2. Ability to apply knowledge and understanding
● To develop analytical skills, such as analytical thinking, information gathering, and identifying and resolving problems.
● To gain an awareness of the importance of the institutional and political context in which Soviet culture developed under Stalin.
● To demonstrate a basic knowledge of key features of cultural and historical analysis of historical, literary and visual material.
● To use a basic special vocabulary for discussing Soviet history, how to build a structured and reasoned argument to support ideas about it and evaluate primary and secondary sources, both orally and in writing.
● To interpret historical and cultural contexts of the artistic products.
● To discuss key critical concepts in the context of various manifestations in the Soviet history.
● To critically analyse and apply theoretical approaches to the material.
3. Judgment capacity
● To demonstrate a basic knowledge of key features of cultural and historical analysis; use a basic special vocabulary for discussing cultural history development of a structured and reasoned argument to support ideas about a historical or literary text and evaluate secondary sources.
● To interpret historical and cultural events of the Stalin Era in its historical context and view them through the prism of two most distinctive methodological and ideological approaches, namely “Sovetological” (“totalitarian”) and “revisionist”; they will be able to discuss these approaches in the context of various manifestations of Stalinist Russia and be able to critically analyse and apply theoretical approaches to the cultural material.
● To gather, process and evaluate critically information from a variety of paper and electronic sources both primary and secondary.
● To develop skills for independent research and the ability to analyse critical texts.
4. Communication skills
● Students will learn how to share and negotiate ideas in a group.
● Students will develop verbal and written communication skills as well as oral presentation skills in English.
5. Learning skills
● Students will develop skills for independent research and the ability to analyse various cultural and historical documents, such as diaries, literary works, critical and historical resources, various visual materials including film, visual art and architecture.
● Students will be able to gather, process and evaluate critically information from a variety of paper, audio-visual and electronic sources in the process of preparation of class presentations. Students will develop conceptual approach to the materials they will be working with and will learn how to provide at the exam substantial proof for the ideas that were developed as a result of their individual research.
● Development of awareness of and engagement with a range of debates and critical (secondary) works on the subject.
● Development of independent analyses and interpretation with primary sources.
Pre-requirements
Contents
Referral texts
• C. Kelly, D. Shepherd (eds.) Russian Cultural Studies. An Introduction (Oxford: OUP, 1998).
• Stephen Kotkin. Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley, 1995).
• Andrei Siniavsky. Soviet Civilization: A Cultural History (New York, 1990).
• Moshe Lewin. The Making of the Soviet System (London: Methuen, 1985).
• Chris Ward. Stalin’s Russia (London, 1999).
• Chris Ward (ed.). The Stalinist Dictatorship (London, 1999).
• Sheila Fitzpatrick. Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928-1931 (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1978).
• Hans Gunther. The Culture of the Stalin Period (London: Macmillan, 1990).
• Leona Toker. Return from the Archipelago. Narratives of GULAG survivors (Bloomington: Indiana UP).
• Varlam Shalamov. Kolyma Tales (London: Penguin, 1994).
• Alexander Solzhenitsyn. One Day in Life of Ivan Denisovich.
• J. Arch Getty, Roberta T. Manning. Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives (Cambridge: CUP, 1993).
• History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (bolsheviks): Short Course (Moscow, 1939).
• Robert Conquest. The Great Terror. Reassessment (Oxford: OUP, 1990).
• Veronique Garros, Nataliia Korenevskaya, Thomas Lahusen (eds.). Intimacy and Terror: Soviet Diaries of the 1930s (New York, 1995).
• Sheila Fitzpatrick. Everyday Stalinism (Oxford: OUP, 1999).
• Vasily Grossman. Forewer Flowing (London: Colling Harvill, 1986).