Dissent and Disenchantment: Russian Literature and Culture since the Death of Stalin

Russian culture and society since 1953 through literature (in English translation). Topics: opposition and dissent; generational conflict; modernization; everyday life, gender, ethnicity, class, citizenship, exit from communism. Literature of the "Thaw," state-published and samizdat, "village" and "cosmopolitan," the new emigration, Sots-Art, and the Russian "post-modern." Solzhenistyn, Shalamov, Trifonov, Siniavsky-Tertz, Erofeev, Dovlatov, Brodsky, Petrushevskaya, Pelevin, Ulitskaya, Sorokin. Requirements: three reaction papers and final exam (UG); research paper for graduate credit (extra section for graduate students; may register for SLAVLIT 399).