Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures

SLA200H1. Spring 2018

Culture and Politics in Europe

Class meets on Thursdays from 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM in CR403.

Lead Instructor:Maxim Tarnawsky121 St. Joseph St. Alumni Hall 403
maxim.tarnawsky@utoronto.ca 926-1300 x3338 FAX 926-2076

Course Schedule
Schedule of Class Meetings
Week Date Country, Lecturer, Topic, assignments Assigned Reading
Week 1. Jan 4

Introduction
Week 2. Jan 11 South Slavic. Christina Kramer

Framing Skopje: One Hundred Years of Urban History through postcard documentation 

  • Svitlana Boym. The Future of Nostalgia, New York : Basic Books, c2001, excerpts, pp. 3–18 (Chap. 1), 49–55 (Chap 5). Robarts
  • Adam Jaworski, “Linguistic landscapes on postcards: tourist mediation and the sociolinguistic communities of contact,” SOLS VOL 4.3 2010 569–594 doi : 10.1558/sols.v4i3.569
  • Svetlana Boym. “Nostalgia and its Discontents”
  • Prof. Kramer's lecture notes.
    		•
    Week 3. Jan 18 South Slavic. Dragana Obradovic

    Revolution and Mythology 

    		Danilo Kiš, short stories from A Tomb for Boris Davidovich,
  • "The Knife with the Rosewood Handle"
  • "The Sow that Eats her Farrow"
  • "The Mechanical Lions."
    		•
    Week 4. Jan 25South Slavic. Dubravka Zima

    Politics of femininity: Croatian Author Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić

    		“Fisherman Plunk and His Wife” from Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić's Croatian Tales of Long Ago, pp. 55–92, available online or in pdf version.
    Week 5. Feb 1Ukraine. Maxim Tarnawsky

    Loyalty to Communist Ideals

    Assignment 1 due     		Borys Antonenko-Davydovych. Duel
    Week 6. Feb 8 Russia. Leonid Livak

    On the changing interpretation of a text in different political environments

    		Mikhail Bulgakov. Heart of a Dog
    Novel (1925) and screen adaptation (1988)
    Students must view the film and read the novel before the class. The instructor uses the Ginsburg translation for his lecture, but you may read a free online translation by Michael Glenny here.
    Week 7. Feb 15 Finland. Anu Muhonen

    Multilingualism, Identity and Finnish youth culture(s)
  • Leppänen, Sirpa; Kytölä, Samu; Jousmäki, Henna; Peuronen, Saija & Westinen, Elina 2014. "Entextualization and resemiotization as resources for identification in social media." In P. Seargeant and C. Tagg (eds.) The Language of Social Media: Identity and Community on the Internet. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 112-136.
  • Muhonen, Anu. "There are no ghettos: Indexing global rap and hip hop in local Finnish youth radio discourse." InterDisciplines: Journal of History and Sociology, 1/2014, Special Issue of Identity in Media and Music, p. 127-159.
  • Pietikäinen, Sari 2014. "Circulation of indigenous Sámi resources across media spaces. A rhizomatic discourse approach." In: Jannis Androutsopoulos (ed.), Mediatization and Sociolinguistic Change, Berlin: De Gruyter, p. 515–538.
    		•
    Week off! Feb 22 Reading weekNo class
    Week 8. Mar 1 Poland. Lukasz Wodzynski

    Beyond the Human: Science Fiction, Gender, and Posthumanism in Stanislaw Lem's 'The Mask'"

    Assignment 2 due    		 Stanislaw Lem, "The Mask" from his Mortal Engines trans. Michael Kandel, New York: Avon, 1982.
    Week 9. Mar 8 Russia. Tatiana Smolyarova

    Culture and Politics in Putins' Russia
  • Selections from: Peter Pomerantsev. Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia, New York: Public Affairs, 2014.
  • Maria Lipman. "Putinist art: Russia cracks down on cultural freedom"
  • Joshua Yaffa. “The Rise and Fall of Russia’s Most Acclaimed Theatre”
    		•
    Week 10. Mar 15 Russia and Ukraine. Taras Koznarsky

    The Beylis case
  • Sholom Aleichem, Bloody Hoax, Trans. Aliza Shevrin (Bloomington: Indiana U Press, 1991) (selections)
  • Ezekiel Leikin, The Beilis transcripts: the anti-semitic trial that shook the world (Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 1993). (selections).
    		•
    Week 11. Mar 22 Russia. Kate Holland

    Literature and Life in Nineteenth Century

    Assignment 3 due     		Ivan Turgenev. Fathers and Sons.
    Week 12. Mar 29 Socialist Countries. Taras Koznarsky

    Socialist Realism


    Concluding Test
  • Iakiv Bash, "Gorky at the Dnipro Electrostation Site."
  • Wikipedia article, Socialist Realism.
  • Selected materials on Socialist Realism.

    • The first hour of class will consist of Prof Koznarsky's lecture. The second hour will be devoted to the concluding test.
    SLA 200 Information
    About SLA 200Class Schedule Reading list