This course will introduce students to Russian history through its visual culture.
We will explore the political uses of art and the contributions of art to politics in four case studies: medieval Orthodox icons, eighteenth-century palace architecture, modern realistic painting, and twentieth-century film and photography (see below for more detail). By comparing a variety of visual and verbal sources, we also will analyze the ways in which different kinds of sources shape our views of history and our views of the world around us. We will read widely in Russian visual culture and each student will write a research paper on a topic of their own choice.
The goals of this course include:
- Improving students’ ability to read visual documents analytically
- Improving students’ ability to write coherent, persuasive essays
- Gaining an appreciation for Russian history and culture
- Thinking about the role of visual culture in history, politics, public ethics, and everyday life
Requirements and Grading
Participation in discussion (10%)
Bi-weekly 1-page (300 word) essays on the reading (20%)
Research Project:
Prospectus (5%)
750-word excerpt-draft(15%)
Peer-review (10%)
Oral presentation (10%)
15-page (4500 word) completed paper (30%)
Reading Assignments:
W Bruce Lincoln, Between Heaven and Hell: 1000 Years of Russian Culture
Valerie Kivelson and Joan Neuberger, eds, Picturing Russia: Explorations in Visual Culture
Robin Cormack, Icons
George Munro, The Most Intentional City: St Petersburg in the Reign of Catherine the Great
The Memoirs of Princess Dashkova
David Jackson, The Wanderers and Critical Realism in Nineteenth-Century Russian Art
Peter Brooks, Realist Vision
Christina Kiaer, Imagine No Possessions: Socialist Objects of Russian Constructivism
Lilya Kaganovsky, How the Soviet Man was (Un)Made
Oksana Bulgakowa, Eisenstein: A Biography
plus
Excerpts from selected memoirs, plays, manifestos, state decrees on the following topics
CASE STUDIES
1. Icons, Frescos and Apocalypse, 1480s-1580s
In this segment of the course we will study the cooperation of church and state in promoting public and private codes of conduct. We will study the gradual centralization of state efforts to direct icon painting, and as a case study--the production and uses of Orthodox icons and frescos of the Last Judgment during the reign of Ivan the Terrible.
2. Catherine the Great and St Petersburg, 1770-80s
In this segment of the course we will study the Empress’s efforts to “westernize,” “civilize,” “enlighten” Russians though written and visual arts: her commission of plays and palaces, purchase of art, and building of museums.
We will read the memoirs of Catherine’s friend, the Princess Dashkova, and the play, Woe from a Carriage, to study the successes and limitations of the campaign. (Woe is a satire about two serf owners so obsessed with French culture that they break up a serf family -- selling them for the money to buy the latest French carriage)
3. Russian Realist Painting, 1870s-1880s
In this segment we will study the rise of a generation of artists who saw themselves as the “conscience of society” and sought to use “Realism” in paintings for social and political critique. We will also examine those artists who resisted being categorized as “political.”
We will read fiery political manifestos of the painters’ contemporaries and compare them with the works of the painters known as the Wanderers, including Ilya Repin and Izaak Levitan, whose works were both controversial and popular.
4. Soviet Socialist Realism in the Visual Arts,
In this segment of the course we will study the ways in which Soviet visual artists (primarily in photography and film) implemented the policy known as socialist realism.
Dr. Neuberger studies modern Russian culture in social and political context. Her teaching interests include modern Russia, nineteenth-century Europe, gender, film and visual culture. She is the author of "Hooliganism: Crime, Culture and Power in St. Petersburg, 1900-1914" (1993); and "Ivan the Terrible: The Film Companion" (2003). She co-authored "Europe and the Making of Modernity, 1815-1914" (2005); co-edited Imitations of "Life: Two Centuries of Melodrama in Russia" (2001) and produced the special-feature documentary, "The Politics and History of Ivan" for the Criterion Collection DVD, "Eisenstein: The Sound Years."