Instructor: Dr. Laura Matthews [to be confirmed]
In English. No prerequisites.
Love and death push at the edges of the human experience, and writers of every era take up the challenge of depicting these ideas afresh. Our class will trace the evolution of love and death within the Russian-language short story form over almost two centuries, produced by writers like Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Lev Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Zinaida Gippius, Andrei Platonov, Yuri Trifonov, Lyudmila Petrushevskaya and Lyudmila Ulitsakaya, among others. We will consider how together, “love” and “death” drive storytelling and forge bonds between stories and readers. Why do we ‘believe’ in love or death in a given story? Do we seek to be inspired by stories of ‘ideal love’ or ‘beautiful death’? Do we prefer to follow realistic depictions of human desire, violence, and tragedy? Or might we be drawn to grotesque or surreal renderings of these existential forces? And what cultural-historical situations might lead writers and readers towards preferring one form over another?
All readings and discussion in English. No prerequisites. Fulfills SAS core goals AH o, p; WC d.