RUSS 379 - The City and Its Myths: St. Petersburg

This course explores the cultural representations of an unusual city: in just over three centuries, St. Petersburg has changed from a whimsical project of Russian autocracy to the actual seat of imperial power to the “alternative” metropolis associated with both conservatism and dissent. In addition, the city’s liminal position on the Baltic has long been interpreted as embodying the contradictions of Western modernity on Russian soil. We will examine how this eccentric, hybrid space gave rise to the myth of an “unreal” city suspended between culture and nature. We will trace the crystallisation of the St. Petersburg myth in Russian literary classics and follow its radical transformation in the twentieth century, when its master-trope of resisting annihilation became an existential reality. Readings include works by Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Bely, Blok, Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Vaginov, Kharms, Bitov, Brodsky, Elena Shvarts, Polina Barskova and Aleksandra Tsibulia, along with travel writing (de Custine, Serge), documentary prose (L. Ginzburg) and urban lore. We will also watch and analyze films by Sergei Eisenstein, Alexander Sokurov, Alexei Uchitel, Sergei Loznitsa and the Necrorealist group. Conducted in English. An additional weekly session will be scheduled for students taking the course for Russian credit.

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 379
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 non-English language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a non-English language, or works of the visual or performing arts).