Joan Neuberger

What does socialism’s Soviet, Cold War past have to do with socialism’s possible futures, if anything? This course will focus on understanding ordinary people’s experience of the Soviet project—the world’s largest experiment in building state socialism—and on the plural interpretations of this experience after the Soviet Union’s collapse. We will study socialist and post-socialist Eurasia to understand what socialism might mean today as a resource for resisting state-sponsored corruption and rampant social inequality, in the region—and beyond. In the first few weeks of class, we will discuss the origins of socialism in the Russian empire in the nineteenth century, popular experiences of the Russian Revolutionary period from 1905-1930s. We will then look at some case studies of the organization of Soviet society, from collectivization to the informal economy, to consider the ways in which the official goal of constructing socialism shaped the everyday lives of Soviet citizens. Finally, we will use these historical accounts to inform our exploration of socialism as a set of material, affective and ideological infrastructures that became newly visible, sensible, and comprehensible only after socialism lost its status as an official state doctrine, and the end of the Cold War. The last few weeks of the course will consider activist movements in post-socialist Eurasia and the United States that explicitly or implicitly take up the ideas and practices of collective life that oriented Soviet social modernity.


Selected Readings:
Aronoff, Kate and Alyssa Battistoni, Daniel Aldana Cohen, and Thea Riofrancos (2019) A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal
Burawoy, Michael, Krotov, P (1992) “The Soviet transition from socialism to capitalism: worker control and economic bargaining in the wood industry.”
Cherkaev, Xenia (2018) “Self-Made Boats and Social Self-Management: The Late-Soviet Ethics of Mutual Aid” Cahiers du monde russe
Collier, Stephen J (2011) Post-Soviet Social: Neoliberalism, Social Modernity, Biopolitics
Dace Dzenovska (2014) “Bordering encounters, sociality and distribution of the ability to live a ‘normal life’”
Engels, Barbara and Cliff Rosenthal, Five Sisters: Woman against the Tsar
Grant, Bruce (1995) In the Soviet House of Culture: A Century of Perestroikas
Humphrey, Caroline (1983) Marx Went Away but Karl Stayed Behind
Kharkhordin, Oleg (1999) The Collective and the Individual in Russia: A Study of Practices
Kotkin, Stephen (1995) Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization
Kruglova, Anna (2017) “Social Theory and Everyday Marxists: Russian Perspectives on Epistemology and Ethics” Comparative Studies in Society and History
Lemon, Alaina (1998) “Your Eyes Are Green like Dollars”: Counterfeit Cash, National Substance, and Currency Apartheid in 1990s Russia
Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels (1848) The Communist Manifesto
Rivkin‐Fish, Michele (2009) “Tracing landscapes of the past in class subjectivity: Practices of memory and distinction in marketizing Russia” American Ethnologist
Roudakova, Natalia (2017) Losing Pravda: Ethics and The Press in Post-Truth Russia
Shevchenko, Olga (2008) Crisis and the Everyday in Postsocialist Moscow
Steinberg, Mark (2017) The Russian Revolution, 1905-1921
Verdery, Katherine (1996) What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next?
Volkov, Vadim (2006) Violent Entrepreneurs: The Use of Force in the Making of Russian Capitalism
Wood, Tony (2018) Russia without Putin: Money, Power and the Myths of the New Cold War
Yurchak, Alexei (2006) Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation

Selected Films:
Sergei Eisenstein: Strike (1924), Old and New (1929)
Mikhail Romm, Nine Days of One Year (1962)
Aleksei Fedorchenko, Angels of Revolution (2014)


Requirements:
The bulk of the work over the course of the semester will include reading, writing, and revising drafts as you progress towards a final paper. Further specifications for each assignment and the due dates will be posted to the course website. Students are required to:

1.    Prepare the readings, attend class, and fully participate in class discussion. (10%)
2.    Submit weekly annotations to the assigned readings using Perusall, a social reading application integrated into our Canvas course site (10%)
3.    Submit four 500 word papers in response to the readings (25%)
4.    Midterm essay (25%). Careful summary, synthesis, extension, or critique of 2-3 readings in first half of class, 8-10 pages long.
5.    Provide oral and written feedback to 3-5 students on their papers (10%).
6.    Submit a final essay of 10-12 pages (30%). This paper is a culmination of your written work throughout the semester, and as such should draw on your prior drafts to develop an argument about an issue that you’ve found compelling. One week before the due date, please provide an abstract, and note how you will incorporate the feedback you have received, or your planned revisions, into the final draft.

The Signature Course (UGS 302 and 303) introduces first-year students to the university’s academic community through the exploration of new interests. The Signature Course is your opportunity to engage in college-level thinking and learning.

In this course we will explore twentieth-century Russian history through its representation in film. Russian movies during this period -- popular entertainment features, avant-garde experiments, radical revolutionary agitation, and animation -- include some of the greatest films ever made. Emphasis in discussions and writing assignments will be on the ways that films "write" history, and the cultural and political pressures that shaped the depictions of historical issues in particular periods.
Goals of the course include
•    Learning to “read” films critically and creatively
•    Learning to read films as primary sources
•    Gaining appreciation for Russian avant-garde and entertainment films
•    Learning about Russian revolutionary and Soviet culture through films
•    Learning to write very brief, concise, articulate essays
•    Enjoying the research and writing of an extended research project on some aspect of Russian film history

Readings:
Books to Purchase:
Tim Corrigan, A Short Guide to Writing About Film
Birgit Beumers, A History of Russian Cinema
Rimgaila Salys, The Russian Cinema Reader
John Thompson, Russia and the Soviet Union
Denise Youngblood, Movies for the Masses
Emma Widdis, Socialist Senses
Lilya Kaganovsky, The Voice of Technology: Soviet Cinema’s Transition to Sound
Joan Neuberger, This Thing of Darkness: Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible in Stalin’s Russia
Rima Salys, The Musical Comedy Films of Grigorii Aleksandrov

Additional required reading will be posted on Canvas

Films:
Child of the Big City (Bauer, 1914)
Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein, 1925)
Aelita (Protozanov, 1924)
Bed and Sofa (Room, 1927)
Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov, 1929)
Chapaev (Vasiliev and Vasiliev, 1934)
Circus (Aleksandrov, 1936)
Ivan the Terrible (Eisenstein, 1945, 1946/58)
Ivan’s Childhood (Tarkovsky, 1965)
Nine Days of One Year (Romm, 1962)
Man in a Frame, Film-Film-Film, (Khitruk), Tale of Tales (Norstein)
Prisoner of the Caucasus (Gaidai, 1967)
White Sun of the Desert (Motyl, 1970)
Commissar (Askoldov, 1967/88)
Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears (Menshov, 1979)

GRADING:
Participation in Discussion: 30%
Very Short Weekly Assignments 30%
Research Paper 40%, of which:
    Topic and bibliography 5%
    Prospectus 5%
    1000-word section 10%
    Final Paper 20%

The Public and Digital History graduate seminar introduces students to the main practices of public and digital history. This year the course will be devoted to digital collections. The course is open to students in all fields. It is designed to be adaptable to support pre-dissertation preparation in all fields.
Nothing in recent times has changed the practice of historical research more than the online availability of documents and finding aids. In this course we will both study and practice documents digitization.
 We will study the history of documents digitization: who started it? Who decides what goes online? Who uses online documents and how? And who benefits most from the digitization of research materials? How can those benefits be shared most equitably?
We will practice digitization. Each student will identify a small collection of documents in an archive, museum, or library at UT-Austin (preferably documents useful for the student’s own research program). Each student will then work with the staff of that institution to have the documents digitized; they will help promote the newly digitized collections and develop new undergraduate curriculum units based on their digitized collections.
Throughout the semester, students will work on writing for the public by designing a website and filling it with blog posts (and possibly podcasts or videos) about the collaborative work of the course and about their own individual projects.

Students will also design lesson plans for students at college and pre-college levels based on their documents.

As a result of these individual and collaborative activities, the graduate students in this course will further their own research, support the digitization programs of UT institutions, make documents available to researchers, undergraduate students, and the public, and show readers of all kinds how their documents can be used to learn something new about the past.

The goals of the course (in no particular order) are:

•    to complement students’ academic work and preparation for dissertation writing with practical experience producing history for the public
•    to learn to write more lucid and accessible scholarly prose by writing for the public
•    to acquire skills in basic digital methods useful for research, information management, data visualization, and visual presentation.
•    to encourage students to include public and digital history in their professional profile as historians
•    to collaborate with a team of faculty, collections staff, digital specialists, and other students to increase the volume of primary documents available to researchers and to the public
•    to become familiar with the digitized archives in the student’s field and to add substantially to the online possibilities for research in that field.
•    to share that knowledge with faculty, other students, and the public

The modern Russian Empire was both authoritarian and revolutionary. It was both a nation state and an empire that covered one-sixth of the world’s land mass. Politically dominated by Russia and Russians, its population was a diverse mix of ethnicities, religions, classes, cultures, and environmental topographies. In 1917, the Russian Revolution changed the world and set the political agenda for the entire 20th century and beyond.

In this course we will examine fundamental issues regarding political, social, cultural life in the modern Russian Empire during the reign of the Romanov dynasty from 1613 to 1917.

Themes include:

·      autocracy as a political system

·      political opposition and the revolutionary movement

·      national & imperial identity at the crossroads of Europe and Asia

·      poverty & modern industry in a predominantly rural society

Required readings include:

Lindsey Hughes, The Romanovs: Ruling Russia, 1613-1917

B. Engel & C. Rosenthal, eds., Five Sisters: Women Against the Tsar

Additional required readings will be on-line on the course Canvas site (approximately 100-150 pages a week)

Grading & Assignments

Map Exercise - 10%

Three In-Class Exams, 20% each

Each student will be required to participate in class-wide timeline project

Each student will be required to make short presentations to the class on historical artifacts and art works. 

The Public and Digital History graduate seminar introduces students to the main practices of public and digital history. This year the course will be devoted to digital collections. The course is open to students in all fields. It is designed to be adaptable to support pre-dissertation preparation in all fields.

Nothing in recent times has changed the practice of historical research more than the online availability of documents and finding aids. In this course we will both study and practice documents digitization.

 We will study the history of documents digitization: who started it? Who decides what goes online? Who uses online documents and how? And who benefits most from the digitization of research materials? How can those benefits be shared most equitably?

We will practice digitization. Each student will identify a small collection of documents in an archive, museum, or library at UT-Austin (preferably documents useful for the student’s own research program). Each student will then work with the staff of that institution to have the documents digitized; they will help promote the newly digitized collections and develop new undergraduate curriculum units based on their digitized collections.

Throughout the semester, students will work on writing for the public by designing a website and filling it with blog posts (and possibly podcasts or videos) about the collaborative work of the course and about their own individual projects.

As a result of these individual and collaborative activities, the graduate students in this course will further their own research, support the digitization programs of UT institutions, make documents available to researchers, undergraduate students, and the public, and show readers of all kinds how their documents can be used to learn something new about the past.

The goals of the course (in no particular order) are:

•           to complement students’ academic work and preparation for dissertation writing with practical experience producing history for the public

•           to learn to write more lucid and accessible scholarly prose by writing for the public

•           to acquire skills in basic digital methods useful for research, information management, data visualization, and visual presentation.

•           to encourage students to include public and digital history in their professional profile as historians

•           to collaborate with a team of faculty, collections staff, digital specialists, and other students to increase the volume of primary documents available to researchers and to the public

•           to become familiar with the digitized archives in the student’s field and to add substantially to the online possibilities for research in that field.

•           to share that knowledge with faculty, other students, and the public

The modern Russian Empire was both authoritarian and revolutionary. It was both a nation state and an empire that covered one-sixth of the world’s land mass. Politically dominated by Russia and Russians, its population was a diverse mix of ethnicities, religions, classes, cultures, and environmental topographies. In 1917, the Russian Revolution changed the world and set the political agenda for the entire 20^th century and beyond.

In this course we will examine fundamental issues regarding political, social, cultural life in the modern Russian Empire during the reign of the Romanov dynasty from 1613 to 1917.

Themes include:

·      autocracy as a political system

·      political opposition and the revolutionary movement

·      national & imperial identity at the crossroads of Europe and Asia

·      poverty & modern industry in a predominantly rural society

Required readings include:

Lindsey Hughes, The Romanovs: Ruling Russia, 1613-1917

Valerie A. Kivelson and Ronald Grigor Suny, Russia’s Empires

B. Engel & C. Rosenthal, eds., Five Sisters: Women Against the Tsar

Additional required readings will be on-line on the course Canvas site (approximately 100-150 pages a week)

Grading & Assignments

Map Exercise - 10%

Three In-Class Exams, 20% each

Each student will be assigned to a social group (for example: Russian peasants, Russian nobles, Russian Jews, Central Asian nomads, Muslims, Caucasus mountain people, etc) and will be responsible for group readings, presentations, and a group online exhibit on daily life, housing, work, faith, dress, and food, 30%

This course introduces students to the main practices of public history.  We will be learning by doing (and, of course, reading). The goal is to complement students’ academic work and preparation for dissertation writing and to both encourage students to include public history in their professional profile as historians and to offer experience, skill-building, and credentials in a variety of forms of public history. We will meet with a variety of people doing public and digital history (museum curators, archivists, preservationists, public librarians, bloggers, website managers, documentary film makers, podcasters, digital technology specialists). Visits with specialists will be coordinated with hands-on activities, such as:

• Writing historical background for paintings on historical subjects in the university art museum, to be posted alongside the paintings and available on a phone app developed by students in the UT Digital Humanities Lab.
• Designing exhibits of various scales, based on research in the Austin History Center (an archive and small museum), the Briscoe Center for American History (a UT archive), the LBJ Presidential Library and Museum.
• Doing research in online repositories of texts and images.
• Running workshops at public libraries for interested members of the public to write their own histories
• Doing oral histories; designing exhibits that showcase oral history, making podcasts
• Designing public history websites
• Using new mapping programs to show site-specific events and documents.
• Making short documentary films.
• Blogging about all of it on a course-specific blog.
• Additional projects that derive from students’ interests

At this point, my plan is to organize each of these activities around one or two specific projects, one of which will be a website and exhibit about the UT Tower Shooting of August 1, 1966. We may choose to work on a different project, depending on student interest.

The Signature Course (UGS 302 and 303) introduces first-year students to the university’s academic community through the exploration of new interests. The Signature Course is your opportunity to engage in college-level thinking and learning.

In this course we will explore the nature of Russian and Soviet imperialism through studying Russian films about empire. The goals of the course include:

•    Learning to “read” films critically and creatively  

 •    Learning about the ways political ideology and social concepts are represented and disseminated in cultural forms

•    Learning about different perspectives on imperial rule    

•    Learning to write very brief, concise, articulate essays  

•    Enjoying the research and writing of an extended essay on ways imperialism is represented in filmTwo kinds of writing assignment are used in this class.

1. Very short weekly response papers based on the reading and screening.These are intended to help you think through at least one aspect of the week’s topic and be better prepared for discussion. Papers may be no longer than 250 words.

2. Research paper. Each student will write a 3000-3500 word research paper based on a topic related to the course. The final paper will be preceded by a schedule of preliminary writing exercises and much class discussion about topics, resources, research and writing tactics, and your results. Each of you will present a final oral report of no more than 5 minutes about your project.

Texts:

Readings include but are not restricted to

Burbank, VonHagen, and Remnev, Russian Empire: Space, People, Power, 1700-1930.

Suny, Martin, A State of Nations: Empire and NationBuilding in the Age of Lenin and Stalin

Harsha Ram, The Imperial Sublime

Bartlett, A HIstory of Russia

Grading:

Participation in Discussion: 25%

Very Short Weekly Assignments 25%

Research Paper 50%, of which:

            Topic and bibliography 5%

            Prospectus 5%

            Book Review 10%

            1000-word section 10%

            Final Paper 20%

Additional information on writing assignments will be distributed in class

The Signature Course (UGS 302 and 303) introduces first-year students to the university’s academic community through the exploration of new interests. The Signature Course is your opportunity to engage in college-level thinking and learning.

Description:

This course will introduce students to Russian history through its visual culture. It will also introduce visual culture through Russian history.

By comparing a variety of visual and verbal sources, we 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 contemporary visual theory and each student will write a research paper on a topic of his or her 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

Texts/Readings:

Valerie Kivelson and Joan Neuberger, eds Picturing Russia: Explorations in Visual Culture

Richard Howells and Joaquim Negreiros, Visual Culture

Roger Bartlett, A History of Russia

Mary Lynn Rampolla, A Pocket Guide to Writing in History

Other chapters and articles posted on Blackboard as pdfs

Assignments:

Participation in discussion (10%)

Regular 1-page (300 word) essays on the reading (20%)

Research Project:

Prospectus (5%)

Source review (5%)

1000-word excerpt-draft (10%)

Peer-review (10%)

Oral presentation (10%)

15-page (4500 word) completed paper (30%)

About the Professor:

Professor Neuberger studies modern Russian culture in social and political context, with a focus on the politics of the  arts. She is the author of an eclectic range of publications, including Hooliganism: Crime and Culture in St Petersburg, 1900-1914 (California: 1993), Ivan the Terrible: The Film Companion (Palgrave: 2003); co-author of Europe and the Making of Modernity, 1815-1914 (Oxford: 2005); and co-editor of Imitations of Life: Melodrama in Russia (Duke: 2001) and Picturing Russia: Explorations in Visual Culture (Yale: 2008). Her teaching interests include modern Russia, nineteenth-century Europe, film, and visual culture.

The historiographical purpose of this course is to examine various ways of interpreting the visual-- things we see and the things we make to be seen – in order to develop strategies for using visual documents in historical (or other) research. The explosion of literature about the visual, visuality, visual culture, and visual studies makes it impossible to be comprehensive. So we will tackle a handful of case studies in the theory and practice of visual studies designed to help us think about how we read images, how we know what we know, how we use what we find, how our thinking about the past is shaped by visual evidence and experience.

            The practical purpose of this course is to study the structure and composition of scholarly articles to compose one of our own. Here the literature is almost infinite, so I have chosen readings that offer a variety of strategies, structures, origins, purposes, evidence, and narrative styles.

Course Requirements

            Reading: Weekly theoretical discussions and practical applications.

            Discussion: active participation in course discussions,

oral presentations on reading and writing

            Writing: Weekly short responses.

Periodic assignments leading to publishable article (20-25pp)

Required Reading to Purchase:

Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes

Lilya Kaganovsky, How the Soviet Man Was (Un)Made

Tamara Chaplin, Turning On the Mind: French Philosophers on Television

Gyan Prakash and Kevin M. Kruse, eds.,The Spaces of the Modern City: Imaginaries, Politics, and Everyday Life

Troben Grodal, Embodied Visions: Evolution, Emotion, Culture and Film

Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites, No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy

In this course we will examine fundamental issues regarding political, social, cultural life in the modern Russian Empire, autocracy as a political system, national identity at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, poverty & modern industry in a predominantly rural society, political opposition and the revolutionary movement.

Readings (Required): available at bookstores 

Nicholas Riasanovsky & Mark Steinberg, A History of Russia

V. Kivelson and J. Neuberger, eds., Picturing Russia:Explorations in Visual Culture

Anna Labzina, Days of a Russian Noblewoman

B. Engel & C. Rosenthal, eds., Five Sisters: Women Against the Tsar

Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: A History of the Russian Revolution

Additional required readings will be on-line on our Blackboard site on the "Course Documents" page

Assignments & Grading

Map Exercise - 10% 

Short Essays/Participation: 10%  

Two In-Class Exams, 20% each = 40%

Take-home Final Exam 40%

Attendance in class is required. In case of absence it is your responsibility to find out about scheduling or other changes. Additional information on assignments will be distributed in class. No make-up exams will be allowed without written documentation for a family or medical emergency. Students who will miss class for religious holidays or other University sanctioned events should contact me in advance to make accommodations.

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."

The Signature Course (UGS 302 and 303) introduces first-year students to the university’s academic community through the exploration of new interests. The Signature Course is your opportunity to engage in college-level thinking and learning.

Please check back for updates.

Please check back for updates.

In this course we will examine fundamental issues regarding political, social, cultural

life in the modern Russian Empire.

o        autocracy as a political system

o        national identity at the crossroads of Europe and Asia;

o        poverty & modern industry in a predominantly rural society

o        political opposition and the revolutionary movement

Texts:

Nicholas Riasanovsky & Mark Steinberg, A History of Russia

V. Kivelson and J. Neuberger, eds., Picturing Russia:Explorations in Visual Culture

Anna Labzina, Days of a Russian Noblewoman

B. Engel & C. Rosenthal, eds., Five Sisters: Women Against the Tsar

Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: A History of the Russian Revolution

Additional required readings will be on-line on our Blackboard site on the "Course Documents" page

Grading:

Map Exercise - 10%

Short Essays/Participation: 10%

Two In-Class Exams, 20% each

Take-home Final Exam 40%

The Signature Course (UGS 302 and 303) introduces first-year students to the university’s academic community through the exploration of new interests. The Signature Course is your opportunity to engage in college-level thinking and learning.

Please check back for updates.

Please check back for updates.

Please check back for updates.

Please check back for updates.

Please check back for updates.

Description:

Why did communism collapse? Are we in another Cold War? Is Putin the next Stalin? This course provides an interdisciplinary introduction to these and other key issues, topics, and events that are central to the field of Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies.  It features frequent UT faculty guest speakers from across the university with diverse disciplinary specialities including History, Slavic languages and literature, Anthropology, Geography, Political Science, and Ethnomusicology. The course format consists of lectures, discussion, and frequent interactive, student-driven exercises and projects. This is a core course required for a degree in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, and it carries a global studies flag.  

Readings Include the Following:

1. Barbara Engel and Clifford Rosenthal, Five Sisters: Women Against the Tsar.

2. Bob Weinberg and Laurie Bernstein, Revolutionary Russia: A History in Documents.

3. Heda Kovaly, Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague, 1941-1968.

4. Thomas Blatt, From the Ashes of Sobibor.

5. Aleksandar Zograf, Regards from Serbia: A Cartoonist’s Diary of the War in Serbia.

6. Additional readings will be posted to canvas.

Please check back for updates.

Please check back for updates.

Please check back for updates.

Description:

Why did communism collapse? Are we in another Cold War? Is Putin the next Stalin? This course provides an interdisciplinary introduction to these and other key issues, topics, and events that are central to the field of Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies.  It features frequent UT faculty guest speakers from across the university with diverse disciplinary specialities including History, Slavic languages and literature, Anthropology, Geography, Political Science, and Ethnomusicology. The course format consists of lectures, discussion, and frequent interactive, student-driven exercises and projects. This is a core course required for a degree in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, and it carries a global studies flag.  

Readings Include the Following:

1. Barbara Engel and Clifford Rosenthal, Five Sisters: Women Against the Tsar.

2. Bob Weinberg and Laurie Bernstein, Revolutionary Russia: A History in Documents.

3. Heda Kovaly, Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague, 1941-1968.

4. Thomas Blatt, From the Ashes of Sobibor.

5. Aleksandar Zograf, Regards from Serbia: A Cartoonist’s Diary of the War in Serbia.

6. Additional readings will be posted to canvas.

Please check back for updates.

Description:

Why did communism collapse? Are we in another Cold War? Is Putin the next Stalin? This course provides an interdisciplinary introduction to these and other key issues, topics, and events that are central to the field of Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies.  It features frequent UT faculty guest speakers from across the university with diverse disciplinary specialities including History, Slavic languages and literature, Anthropology, Geography, Political Science, and Ethnomusicology. The course format consists of lectures, discussion, and frequent interactive, student-driven exercises and projects. This is a core course required for a degree in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, and it carries a global studies flag.  

Readings Include the Following:

1. Barbara Engel and Clifford Rosenthal, Five Sisters: Women Against the Tsar.

2. Bob Weinberg and Laurie Bernstein, Revolutionary Russia: A History in Documents.

3. Heda Kovaly, Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague, 1941-1968.

4. Thomas Blatt, From the Ashes of Sobibor.

5. Aleksandar Zograf, Regards from Serbia: A Cartoonist’s Diary of the War in Serbia.

6. Additional readings will be posted to canvas.

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