2024-2025 Course Offerings
Autumn
REES 20001/30001: Tolstoy's War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy’s monumental novel War and Peace, which the author Henry James called “a loose baggy monster,” is a sui generis work of modern literature that offered a response and challenge to the European Realist novel and founded a Russian national myth. We will read the novel in translation, alongside its adaptations into opera, film, and Broadway musical. We will also read literary theoretical works inspired by the novel and consider the novel in relation to theories of narrative, critical theory of gender, and philosophies of community and everyday experience.
(CMLT 22301 / CMLT 32301 / ENGL 28912 / ENGL 32302 / FNDL 27013 / HIST 23704)
REES 23300/33300: Introduction to Contemporary Ukrainian Culture
This course examines contemporary Ukrainian culture and society with attention to anticolonial resistance in the past and after the start of the Russian war on Ukraine in 2014. It focuses on diverse literary texts (poems, novels, memoirs), films (feature, short, documentary), and other forms of cultural production (visual artwork, music videos, multimodal digital projects). It is structured in three parts.The first part examines the CULTURAL MEMORY of events in Ukraine’ history which are re-examined today and continue to resonate in contemporary Ukrainian contexts. Among examined events are persecutions of Ukrainian intellectuals in the Soviet Union, Holodomor or Stalin’s human-made famine, Chornobyl nuclear explosion, and others.The second part focuses on the dynamics of DISSENT AND CIVIC SOCIETY, addressing three contemporary Ukrainian revolutions, feminist movements and gender dissent, debates surrounding public space and the place of Soviet heritage in contemporary Ukraine, and the process of decolonization. The third part examines RUSSIA’S WAR ON UKRAINE, which has been ongoing for more than a decade and 1/3 of Ukraine’s history of independence. This part focuses on places affected by the war, such as Crimea, Mariupol, and the east of Ukraine, but also addresses the dynamics of volunteering in Ukrainian society and artmaking in times of war. No knowledge of Ukrainian language is required for this course.
REES 24425/34425: Invasion Culture: Russia through its Wars
This course looks at contemporary culture through Russia’s invasions, from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Broadly, this course explores how war shapes cultural life. How do the policies and strategies of war, and the art and literature of wartime, convey ideas about power and the state, traditional vs. modern values, civilizational mission vs. cultural pluralism? Beyond Russian literature and film, we consider voices from Afghanistan, the Caucasus, Chechnya, Syria, Belarus, and Ukraine, asking, How are Russia’s wars fought and resisted in the domain of culture?
(CMLT 24425 / GLST 24424 / HIST 24009 / HIST 34009)
REES 24426/34426: The Witch Craze in 17th-Century Europe: Scotland, Poland-Lithuania, Russia, and Moravia
In this course, we look carefully at the reasons for and repercussions of the “witch craze” in the long 17th-century, focussing on primary texts such as trial reports, legal literature, pamphlets, woodcuts, scholarly dissent, and other paraphernalia. The course follows a sweep of the craze from Lancashire in Scotland, where trials began in the 1590s, to Poznań in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, to the Russian village of Lukh on the outskirts of Moscow, where between 1656 and 1660 over twenty-five individuals, most of them male, were tried and several executed, and finally to Northern Moravia under Habsburg rule where inquisitor Hetman Boblig presided over the burning of almost 100 "witches." In each region, trials followed different customs—Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, Catholic—and answered to different legislative discourse—ecclesiastical, laic, secular—yet all can be said to be the product of a common desire and collective fear. To supplement our understanding of the multifaceted anxieties that are expressed in works such as King James’ Daemonologie (1597), and to ask more questions of the intersectional phobias around gender, sexuality, religion, and class (rural-urban; colony-metropole), we take up theory from Foucault, Federici, and Mbembe, and others.
(GNSE 24426 / GNSE 34426 / HIST 22315 / HIST 32315)
REES 27019/37019: Holocaust Object
In this course, we explore various ontological and representational modes of the Holocaust material object world as it was represented during World War II. Then, we interrogate the post-Holocaust artifacts and material remnants, as they are displayed, curated, controlled, and narrated in the memorial sites and museums of former ghettos and extermination and concentration camps. These sites which—once the locations of genocide—are now places of remembrance, the (post)human, and material remnants also serve educational purposes. Therefore, we study the ways in which this material world, ranging from infrastructure to detritus, has been subjected to two, often conflicting, tasks of representation and preservation, which we view through a prism of authenticity. In order to study representation, we critically engage a textual and visual reading of museum narrations and fiction writings; to tackle the demands of preservation, we apply a neo-materialist approach. Of special interest are survivors’ testimonies as appended to the artifacts they donated. The course will also equip you with salient critical tools for future creative research in Holocaust studies.
(ANTH 23910 / ANTH 35035 / ARCH 27019 / HIST 23413 / HIST 33413 / JWSC 29500)
REES 29013/39013: The Burden of History: The Nation and Its Lost Paradise
What makes it possible for the imagined communities called nations to command the emotional attachments that they do? This course considers some possible answers to Benedict Anderson’s question on the basis of material from the Balkans. We will examine the transformation of the scenario of paradise, loss, and redemption into a template for a national identity narrative through which South East European nations retell their Ottoman past. With the help of Žižek’s theory of the subject as constituted by trauma and Kant’s notion of the sublime, we will contemplate the national fixation on the trauma of loss and the dynamic between victimhood and sublimity.
(CMLT 23401 / CMLT 33401 / HIST 24005 / HIST 34005 / NEHC 20573 / NEHC 30573)
REES 29024/39024 States of Surveillance
What does it feel to be watched and listened to all the time? Literary and cinematic works give us a glimpse into the experience of living under surveillance and explore the human effects of surveillance--the fraying of intimacy, fracturing sense of self, testing the limits of what it means to be human. Works from the former Soviet Union (Solzhenitsyn, Abram Tertz, Andrey Zvyagintsev), former Yugoslavia (Ivo Andrić, Danilo Kiš, Dušan Kovačević), Romania (Norman Manea, Cristian Mungiu), Bulgaria (Valeri Petrov), and Albania (Ismail Kadare).
(CMLT 29024 / CMLT 39024 )
Winter
REES 23017/33017: "Wild" Easts
Imaginaries of the “wild” have long been employed as part of colonial projects, from the conquest of lands of the Great Eurasian Steppe to modern conservation initiatives. In this course, we examine ideas about the “wild” with a focus on the easts of “Europe” and easts of Russia, whether Ukraine, Qazaqstan, or Bulgaria, and ways in which these lands have been constructed as “wild” territories. We discuss ecologies and cultures of the steppe, nuclear and (post)industrial wastelands, and contemporary practices of re-wilding to study the violence of being framed as “wild”, as well subversive and liberatory potentials of (re)claiming all things “wild”. The course takes on an interdisciplinary approach, examining works of fiction alongside history books, and films alongside memoirs; additionally, a possibility of a field trip to Site A/Plot M Disposal Site, where the world’s first nuclear reactor is buried, is to be confirmed.
(CEGU 23017 / CEGU 33017 / CHST 23017)
REES 23118/33118: Word, Image, Ritual: Early Russian Culture in Its Historical Context
The course examines elements of Pre-Modern Russian material and non-material culture through a selection of Old Russian (early East Slavic) texts and church buildings. Topics will include hesychasm, iconography and fresco painting, church architecture, epic songs, chronicles, lives of saints, and Novgorodian birch bark documents, explored in their historical and social contexts. All readings are in English.
(HIST 24010 / HIST 34010)
REES 26034/36034: Russian Poetry
What should poetry do—should it have any tasks (personal, literary, political)? In this course, we read short texts that stun, adore, inspire, grieve, mobilize, berate, forgive or forget their addressees and subjects, that reach (or fail to reach) us, their almost-certainly unintended, contemporary readers. Meeting both canonical and forgotten authors across three centuries and many countries of Russophone writing, this course *has* a task: to find what the poems conceal and reveal about their worlds––and ours. If you love poetry, or you have some knowledge of Russian, or you have taken the Russia and Eurasia Civ Core sequence, this class is a good fit for you. The syllabus is finalized with students’ preferences and curiosities in mind. Assignment options include creative projects, independent research, journaling or essays. Discussion of texts will focus on gender, religion, race, imperial subjectivity, and dissent.
(GNSE 26034 / GNSE 36034)
REES 27032/37032: Bodies, Objects, Cognition
This course explores the differences between objects and embodiment as examined in varied historical periods and artistic genres. We will probe the ontological indeterminacy of embodied beings versus machines in terms of agency, autonomy, subjectivity, and artificiality. Our main operative mode is a visual-verbal comparison and its perception. Through discussions of such visual strategies as pareidolia, abstraction, bodyscape, as well as the scientific phenomena of cloning and humanoid robotics, the course will destabilize once fundamental epistemologies to present a cognitive moment when the traditionally stable object-body dichotomy is understood anew as a dynamic site of affective, biological, representational, and mechanical relations. Visual artists, writers and critics studied will include Leonardo da Vinci, Hans Holbein, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, Tadeusz Borowski, Stanislaw Lem, Allan Teger, Magdalena Abakanowicz, W.T.J. Mitchell and others. All readings are in English.
(ANTH 27032 / ANTH 37032 / ARTH 27032 / ARTH 37032 / KNOW 27032/ KNOW 37032)
REES 29021/39021: The Shadows of Living Things: The Writings of Mikhail Bulgakov
“What would your good do if evil did not exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared? After all, shadows are cast by things and people. . . . Do you want to strip the earth of all the trees and living things just because of your fantasy of enjoying naked light?” asks the Devil. Mikhail Bulgakov worked on his novel The Master and Margarita throughout most of his writing career, in Stalin’s Moscow. Bulgakov destroyed his manuscript, re-created it from memory, and reworked it feverishly even as his body was failing him in his battle with death. The result is an intense contemplation on the nature of good and evil, on the role of art, and the ethical duty of the artist, but also a dazzling world of magic, witches, and romantic love, and an irresistible seduction into the comedic. Laughter, as shadow and light, as the subversive weapon but also as power’s whip, grounds human relation to both good and evil. Brief excursions to other texts that help us better understand The Master and Margarita.
(FNDL 29020 )
REES 29023: Returning the Gaze: The West and the Rest
Aware of being observed. And judged. Inferior... Abject… Angry... Proud… This course provides insight into identity dynamics between the “West,” as the center of economic power and self-proclaimed normative humanity, and the “Rest,” as the poor, backward, volatile periphery. We investigate the relationship between South East European self-representations and the imagined Western gaze. Inherent in the act of looking at oneself through the eyes of another is the privileging of that other’s standard. We will contemplate the responses to this existential position of identifying symbolically with a normative site outside of oneself—self-consciousness, defiance, arrogance, self-exoticization—and consider how these responses have been incorporated in the texture of the national, gender, and social identities in the region. Orhan Pamuk, Ivo Andrić, Nikos Kazantzakis, Aleko Konstantinov, Emir Kusturica, Milcho Manchevski.
(CMLT 29023 / CMLT 39023 / HIST 23609 / HIST 33609 / NEHC 29023 / NEHC 39023 / REES 39023)
REES 31500: Teaching Slavic Languages
Teaching Slavic Languages is a course meant to prepare graduate students as effective instructors of Slavic Languages in Academia. REES 31500 will introduce students to fundamental principles of foreign language pedagogy, an array of methodologies and approaches, as well as essential and practical tools for the development of foreign language teaching strategies. Particular emphasis is placed on language structure for more effective instruction in a proficiency-oriented classroom. Since this is very much a “hands-on” course, students are expected to participate in discussions, design relevant pedagogical and professional materials, and lead instruction in preparation for teaching Slavic Languages.
REES 45027: Between ‘New Woman’ and ‘Sex Worker’: Polish Women’s Writings in the 1930s
During the interwar period a constellation of Polish women writers defined through their novels politically and socially progressive positions; although not deeply influenced by Marxism, they were critical of the class society, state, ruling elite, and Catholic mentality. The seminar will investigate these writers’ attempts to represent the unrepresented such as the proletariat, the jobless, the disabled, as well as other socially marginalized members of the society including sex workers. The course will discuss an emergence of the “new woman” against the backdrop of a deeply ingrained patriarchalism, and as an epitome of creative, sexual, and social independence. We will view these phenomena with its roots in 19th century Polish and French naturalism in context of the visual art of Neue Sachlichkeit and the emergence of reportage. Inspired by the social critique offered by writings of Boguszewska, Krzywicka, Melcer, Nałkowska, and others, the seminar will consider the way in which genres such as a novel, short story, and reportage can become tools for reform.
(GNSE 45027)
REES 46200: Critical and Literary Theory
In this seminar, we carefully read selections from some of the most generative and important theorists and literary critics from the 20th and 21st centuries so as to be well equipped to understand their arguments, acknowledge their biases, and critically and responsibly find their shortcomings or discover their relevance for our field, and beyond. Among the authors whose work on cultural philosophy or the philosophy of language and literature we explore are Nietzsche, Heidegger, Arendt, the members of the Frankfurt School (Benjamin, Adorno and Horkheimer, Habermas), Foucault, Ricoeur, Wittgenstein, Structuralism and post-structuralism (Barthes, Derrida, Lacan, Levi-Strauss, Deleuze and Guattari), the psychoanalysts Freud, and Lacan, theorists of gender and sexuality (Beauvoir, Butler, and Haraway, Halberstam) and of nationalism, colonialism and postcolonialism (Anderson, Fanon, Mbembe, Hardt) and of "speculative realism" (Meillassoux, Harman, Bryant), and theorists of the anthropocene and of environmental and biodiversity loss (Tedeschi, Alberro, Morton). The course is tailored to your own research interests and you are encouraged to engage with the theories and arguments by bringing your own interests and claims to a conversation with those of our readings.
The requirements of this course are twofold: weekly discussion posts and active participation in class discussion. requirements of this course.
Spring
REES 20004: Lolita
“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul, Lolita: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate, to tap at three on the teeth.” Popular as Nabokov’s “all-American” novel is, it is rarely discussed beyond its psychosexual profile. This intensive text-centered and discussion-based course attempts to supersede the univocal obsession with the novel’s pedophiliac plot as such by concerning itself above all with the novel’s language: language as failure, as mania, and as conjuration.
(ENGL 28916 / FNDL 25300 / GNSE 24900 / SIGN 26027)
REES 20205/30205: Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
A murder mystery where the riddle is not “Who?” but “Why?”–––Why did the expelled student murder a pawnbroker? Why were innocents punished and exploiters vindicated? Why is justice out of reach, compassion rare, and even communication difficult? And, given these disappointments, why have readers and writers around the world been obsessed with Crime and Punishment since its publication over 150 years ago? Dostoevsky’s novels “claw their way into us” (Iser), “we are drawn in, whirled around, suffocated…” (Woolf). Although he was “a messenger” to James Baldwin, “more human, better than human” in Akira Kurosawa’s estimation, and “the only psychologist” worth learning from according to Friedrich Nietzsche, the real-life Dostoevsky was a desperate gambler, cheater, and chauvinist, not unlike some of the worst characters in his novels. He was recently heralded as both an example of Russian humanism (by Pope Francis) and the “father of Russian fascism” (by a Russian intellectual). Reading Crime and Punishment, we will endeavor to make sense of Dostoevsky’s––and the novel’s––failures and triumphs. Topics we explore will include historical events and the reception of the novel; religion, race, class and gender; and questions of politics and ethics.
(ENGL 20306 / ENGL 30306 / FNDL 20201)
REES 20210/30210: Narrative Doubles
Dostoevsky's early novel "The Double" leads the readers on a descent into the madness of the main character as his double takes over his life. From uncanny usurpers to empathic gateways into alternative identities, in this course doubles teach us about our selves. We will consider how narratives conceptualize the human self and its reality, and how they conjure alternatives. We also ask about the political power of these alternative selves and doubling temporalities - from subversive possibilities to dystopian political nostalgias.
(CMLT 20210 / CMLT 30210)
REES 21300: (Re)Branding the Balkan City: Contemporary Belgrade/Sarajevo/Zagreb
“The freedom to make and remake our cities (and ourselves) is one of the most precious yet most neglected of the human rights,” argues David Harvey. In this course, we use an urban studies lens to explore the complex history, social fabric, architecture, infrastructure, and cultural transformation of the former Yugoslav capitals. Since their inception, these cities have relied on multifaceted exchanges of peoples and political projects, forms of knowledge, financial and cultural capital, means of production, and innovative ideas. Among others, these exchanges produced two phenomena, Yugoslav architecture, embodying one of the great political experiments of the modern era, and the Non-Aligned Movement, as explored in recent documentary films (Turajlić 2023), museum exhibits (MoMA 2018, “Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia 1948-1980”), and monographs (Tito in Africa: Picturing Solidarity). Drawing on anthropological theory and ethnography of the city, we consider processes of urban destruction and renewal, practices of branding spaces and identities, metropolitan citizenship, arts and design, architectural histories and styles, and the broader politics of space. The course is complemented by cultural and historical media, guest speakers, and virtual tours. Classes are conducted in English.
(ARCH 21300 / ARTH 21333 / ARTH 31333 / BCSN 21300 / BCSN 31303 / GLST 21301 / HIST 24008 / REES 31303)
REES 23710: The Underground Book
Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, there was an explosion in the practice of “underground” publishing—- that is, textual objects produced through unofficial, and often illegal, presses. In this undergraduate seminar, we will investigate this phenomenon across a range of transnational contexts. We will begin by considering the theoretical and practical concerns of underground publication. We will then examine how underground publishing manifested in locations as diverse as the late Soviet Union, 1980s Chicago, and Brazil under military dictatorship. We will conclude the course by considering how the rise of digital media has shaped the nature of underground publishing. Throughout, we will pay particular attention to the book as a material object, questioning the ways in which materiality shapes and determines underground reading practices. As part of this seminar, students will gain hands-on experience with various aspects of bookmaking and printmaking. By reproducing underground publication techniques, we will develop first-hand knowledge of the material challenges and opportunities associated with the self-publishing medium. In the final weeks of the course, students will have the chance to produce their own book object. As a culminating project, students will work alongside the instructor and the Department of Special Collections to assemble an exhibition on underground publishing, which will be displayed in the University of Chicago Library.
(CMLT 23710 / HIST 23806 / JWSC 23810)
REES 25030/35030: The Writing I
How do personal and lived experiences shape our understanding of social and cultural phenomena? What is the role of the self in the practice of academic writing? In this course we will examine the self as a method through which we interpret the world and as a repository of knowledge. We will study different academic genres in which personal and lived experiences constitute an integral component of knowledge-making, such as autoethnography and autotheory, discussing their relation to feminist thought. We will also practice and share academic writing that engages the self as a method to understand, interpret and theorize the world around us. The readings will include Lauren Fournier, bell hooks, Gloria Anzaldúa, Shushan Avagyan, Stephanie D. Clare, Donna Haraway, among many others. There will also be workshops/talks by practitioners of autoethnography and autotheory.
(GNSE 25031 / GNSE 35031)
REES 26072/36072: The Roots of War: Historical and Cultural Causes of Russian Aggression in Ukraine
Since the beginning of Russia's war on Ukraine, Vladimir Putin and his entourage have created false historical constructions that serve as the basis for their aggressive policy. The main question of this course is: to what extent is Putin's retro-policy historically grounded, traditional and natural? An analysis of the rhetoric and historiosophy of the modern Russian elite will reveal the sources they been drawn upon. Is there a connection between Muscovite Russia, the Russian Empire and modern Russian neo-imperialism? What role does the legacy of the USSR play in the political system, state structure and foreign policy of the modern Russian Federation? Where do historical trends, national interests and the new imperial ideology coincide and contradict each other? We will also discuss the modern history of opposition to Putin's authoritarianism and trace the history and cultural significance of democratic institutions in Russia. Finally, we will use the history of Ukrainian statehood and the processes of formation of the Ukrainian nation to shed alternative perspective on recent Russian views of Ukraine.
REES 26600/36600: Materiality and Socialist Cinema
What constitutes the materiality of film? How do we understand the "material world" in relation to cinema, and how does the film camera mediate it? What does the process of mediation look like when the goal of cinema is not solely to represent but also change the world? This course will pair theoretical readings on new materialist approaches to cinema with select case studies drawn from Chinese and Soviet revolutionary cinema. Our primary aim is twofold: to introduce students to the “material turn” in cinema and media studies, and to reflect on what the specific fields of Soviet and Chinese Film Studies bring to the discussion. We will look closely at works by socialist filmmakers in the twentieth century who argued that cinema had a special role to play in mediating and transforming the material world. How does socialist cinema seek to orient its viewer to a particular relationship to objects? How does it treat the human relationship to the environment? How does it regard the material of film and the process of filmmaking itself? Ultimately, the course will familiarize students with diverse understandings of materiality and materialism and with key figures and works in global socialist cinema. Readings and screenings will range from the Soviet avant-garde of the 1920s to Chinese revolutionary cinema of the early 1970s, and conclude with recent documentary and video experiments that engage with their legacies.
(CMLT 26602 / CMLT 36602 / CMST 26611 / CMST 36611 / EALC 26611 / EALC 36611)
Anne Eakin Moss and Paola Iovene
REES 27030/37030: In/Dependence and Form: An Introduction to Polish Cinema
This course is a critical introduction to Polish cinema. It surveys Polish cinema during the long 20th century, a tumultuous period: partitioned Poland, interwar independence, World War II, the Holocaust, the Polish People's Republic, post-communist Poland. Cinema has interplayed in complex ways with this history. It has for the most part been funded by the state, and has also helped shape, subverted, or attempted to elude national narratives. Using this interplay of history, nation(s), and cinematic form as a lens, we will discuss films by such directors as Andrzej Żuławski, Agnieszka Holland, Joseph Green, and Stefan and Franciszka Themerson.
REES 29009/39009: Balkan Folklore
Vampires, fire-breathing dragons, vengeful mountain nymphs. 7/8 and other uneven dance beats, heart-rending laments and a living epic tradition.This course is an overview of Balkan folklore from historical, political and anthropological, perspectives. We seek to understand folk tradition as a dynamic process and consider the function of different folklore genres in the imagining and maintenance of community and the socialization of the individual. We also experience this living tradition first-hand through visits of a Chicago-based folk dance ensemble, “Balkan Dance.”
(ANTH 25908 / ANTH 35908 / CMLT 23301 / CMLT 33301 / NEHC 20568 / NEHC 30568)
FNDL 22610: Lacan: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis
This course is designed to be a discussion-rich seminar in which we carefully read through Lacan's Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. The original mode of the work was as lectures over the university (École Normale Supérieure) spring term of 1964; it was published in book form nine years later in French and translated into English in 1978. It continues to be the best resource for thinking through Lacan's interpretations of the pillar concepts of psychoanalytic theory: the Unconscious, Repetition, Transference, and the Drive.
Work required: close textual analysis and six response essays of 300-750 words each.
(REES 22100 / REES 32100)
JWSC 12005: Jewish Civilization III - Narratives of Assimilation
This course offers a survey into the manifold strategies of representing the Jewish community in East Central Europe beginning from the nineteenth century to the Holocaust. Engaging the concept of liminality-of a society at the threshold of radical transformation-it will analyze Jewry facing uncertainties and challenges of the modern era and its radical changes. Students will be acquainted with problems of cultural and linguistic isolation, hybrid identity, assimilation, and cultural transmission through a wide array of genres-novel, short story, epic poem, memoir, painting, illustration, film. The course draws on both Jewish and Polish-Jewish sources; all texts are read in English translation.
(NEHC 12005/ REES 27005 / RLST 22014)