RUSS 394 - Arctic Awakenings

Informed by recent scholarship in environmental humanities and critical Indigenous studies, this course explores the histories and varieties of cultural expression of the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions of Europe, North America, and Eurasia. Our main focus will be works of film and literature by Saami, Nenets, Sakha, Yukagir, Chukchi, Yupik, and Inuit activists, culture workers, and knowledge keepers. By centering Indigenous worldviews and aesthetic systems, we will attempt to move beyond a view of the Arctic as an object of settler imagination and desire, and instead place it at the center of complex systems of human and more-than-human relations. From this perspective, we will analyze how legacies of colonialism and resource extraction have shaped the present realities of climate change and geopolitical conflict affecting us all. Ultimately this course seeks to equip students to contribute to future-oriented strategies of survival, on both local and global levels.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
Prerequisite(s): For Russian credit: RUSS 212 or equivalent.
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Cross-listing(s): LIT 383
Not offered: 2025-26
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).