| Unit name | Gender in Twentieth- and Twenty-First Century Russia |
|---|---|
| Unit code | RUSS30062 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | H/6 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
| Unit director | Dr. Connor Doak |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
None |
| Co-requisites |
None |
| School/department | Department of Russian |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
When the Bolsheviks seized power in the October Revolution of 1917, they aimed not merely to create a new political system, but to transform society in its entirety, including gender and sexuality. In this course, we begin by studying Marxist ideas about gender and sexuality and then consider the extent to which the Soviets put these ideas into practice. Reading a variety of official and unofficial Soviet texts, we trace how gender and sexuality became contested political fields in the Soviet Union, and consider how Soviet citizens complied with, negotiated and resisted norms propagated by the state. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, many initially assumed that Russia would follow the path of Western-style liberal capitalist democracy, and the unique features of Russia’s sex/gender system would vanish. However, the past decade has seen a resurgence of Russian exceptionalism under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, and, with it, a new cult of virility and heightened surveillance of LBGTQ people. We conclude our course with a consideration of recent developments in Russia, such as the Pussy Riot case and the development of anti-gay laws in St. Petersburg, examining whether and how they fit into Russia’s historical trajectory.
(a) Students will evaluate how gender intersects with broader social, political, and cultural concerns.
(b) They will acquire a deep understanding of Soviet and post-Soviet culture and society, and appreciate the similarities and differences between how gender operates in a socialist and post-socialist framework.
(c) They will develop superior skills of literary and cultural criticism, and improve their critical thinking skills as they craft an argument about how gender operates in a set of texts.
The unit will be taught in a combination of lectures and seminars.
2 x 3000 word essay (50% each)
In the first essay students will develop superior skills of close reading and the ability to evaluate how gender issues are made manifest through choices of literary style (e.g. narrative voice, narrative structure, imagery, particular poetic forms etc.)
Students will then work on a second 3000 word essay, broader in scope, that will involve analysis of a work in its entirety, or a comparative study of how a theme is developed (e.g. motherhood) across two or three texts. This will be due at the beginning of the exams period. Here, students will draw upon the literary analysis skills that they have acquired from the earlier essays, but also create a thesis-driven argument, engage with secondary literature and theoretical questions.
