These are the Special Subject options available in 2024-25. These are indicative of the course offerings for the sub-faculty, so applicants should note that not all options will run in all years, and some course content might change.
Russian Lyric Poetry, Themes and Forms (Michaelmas Term)
Convenor: Professor Andrew Kahn
The modern Russian poetic canon is exceptionally rich and diverse. It is full of formal experimentation, original voices, and has proven to be historically and political alert at all times (sometimes underground, sometimes from abroad) and in complex dialogue with the nation’s history, European art forms, and larger artistic movements. The course will consist of four sets of primary texts organized under a thematic rubric. Rubrics include Identity/Consciousness, Nature, Art and Objects, Cycles. Given the time available, the approach to texts will be more synchronic than historical with an emphasis more on lines than lives (to use a distinction G.S. Smith articulated). There is an ample and methodologically diverse scholarly tradition that in itself repays study, especially at the postgraduate level, as an education in different schools, including Formalism, Structuralism, semiotics, intertextuality, visual poetry, and, of course, New Criticism. One aim of the MSt. option is to encourage the taker to consider (and apply) major approaches in the study of lyric poetry, Western and Russian. The anthology per topic will contain approximately 20 poems, drawn chronologically from various periods and movements. The selection of texts will aim to help the graduate student form a rounded view of the depth of the tradition and to become acquainted with major, second-tier and even minor poets who have written interesting poems. The list of proposed works of poetry will favour poets from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries but may also reach back to the nineteenth century. Topics, authors and readings are adjusted to reflect contemporary trends and individual interest.
The Gulag and the Russian Literary Process (Michaelmas Term)
Convenor: Professor Polly Jones
This course examines 20th and 21st century Russian and Russophone literature about the Soviet labour camps (Gulag), placing this century-long engagement with the theme within the traditions of older Russian prison narratives, and comparing it with Holocaust fiction where appropriate. It considers the shifting artistic, political and ethical stakes of representing the Gulag, and these texts’ role in Soviet and post-Soviet memory politics. Some background reading on the history of the Gulag and on dissidence and samizdat will be helpful, and theoretical readings on memory, post-memory and trauma will be a core part of the paper. Students will also be encouraged to engage with the numerous film and TV adaptations of Gulag literature from the 1990s to the present.
Texts and authors that can be covered, after consultation with students, include: foundational 19th- century texts about incarceration (Dostoevskii, Chekhov); early Stalin-era depictions before the theme became taboo (the Belomorkanal project; Pogodin); published and samizdat/tamizdat Gulag prose by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Ivan Denisovich, V kruge pervom, Arkhipelag Gulag); the samizdat and tamizdat prison narratives of Vasilii Grossman (Vse techet; Zhizn’ i sud’ba), Varlam Shalamov (Kolymskierasskazy); perpetrator fiction by Giorgii Vladimov (Vernyi Ruslan) and Sergei Dovlatov (Zona); post-memory fiction by relatives of prisoners (Okudzhava, Aksenov); and the 21st-century reinvention of Gulag prose by authors including Guzel’ Yakhina, Evgenii Vodolazkin, Zakhar Prilepin and Sergei Lebedev.
Literature and Culture of the Russian Enlightenment (Michaelmas Term)
Convenor: Professor Andrei Zorin
Based on a wide range of literary, historical and philosophical sources this course will address issues of literary and intellectual history of the Enlightenment in Russia, including: the development of national identity and the problem of nationalism; the growth of the public and private spheres; the history of translation and translation theory; the comparative aspect of the Russian enlightenment; the problem of the canon and the idea of periodisation; individual identity and the rise of notions of the self in biography and diary writing.
Rise of the Russian Novel (Hilary Term)
Convenor: Professor Andrei Zorin
The nineteenth century Russian novel constitutes the canon and the core of Russian literature. Many people study Russian to be able to read Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in original, many more follow their works through translation. The course studies the novelistic tradition as it unfolded throughout the century. We’ll study the early history of the novel when writers such as Gogol’ and Lermontov began to explore the possibilities of ‘folk’ tales, ‘society’ tales, the prose cycle, framed narratives, historical fiction, the epic and the psychological case-study, the establishment of Russian Realist tradition with the early novels of Goncharov and Turgenev and the full blossoming of the genre under the pen of the giants. The students will read major Russian novels, analyse the emerging genre in European perspective allowing to see the novel as the formative element of Russian literature, Russian culture and in many ways, Russian social life as the generations of Russian readers were brought up on the models and behavioural patterns provided by the novels. The course may also be tailored according to the interests of the students allowing them the choice of the novels to read.
Gender and Representation in Russian Culture from 1800 (Hilary Term)
Convenor: Professor Philip Bullock
Since the 1980s, study of gender and identity has been one of the liveliest areas of Russian cultural history. Among particular issues of concern have been the rediscovery of work by forgotten women writers, and discussion of the particular characteristics of this; analysis of ‘the feminine’ as a construct, and of its connections with the representation of national identity (especially in the governing myth of ‘Mother Russia’); study of the representation of sexuality and the development of ‘queer theory’ and LGBTQ+ studies; and examination of the link between normative concepts of gender identity and self-expression in literature and other forms of writing, and also in the visual arts (painting, film, etc.)
Those taking the course may specialise in any one area of women’s writing in its relation to cultural history over a longer time-span (for example, women’s memoirs, 1890-1970); or they may consider several different topics with reference to a specifically denominated historical epoch (for example, women’s writing, representations of sexuality in the visual arts, and concepts of gender identity in the era of Romanticism); or they may wish to examine women’s writing and feminist criticism in dialogue with masculinity studies and queer theory. They are urged to contact the Convenor well in advance of their arrival in Oxford in order to discuss possibilities, and to obtain a list of preliminary reading in gender theory and in Russian cultural history.
Late Soviet and Post-Soviet Russian Literature (Hilary Term)
Convenors: Professor Polly Jones and Dr Tamar Koplatadze
This course considers the comparisons and contrasts between late Soviet and post-Soviet culture. The late Soviet literary world was far from 'stagnant', and contained within it many of the literary currents and experimentation that would come out into the open during and after glasnost. Glasnost, perestroika, the abolition of censorship and the disintegration of the USSR brought about fundamental changes in the circumstances of Russian literature. External factors such as political and economic instability, the possibility of travel abroad, changes in the role of literary journals, the collapse of the Union of Writers, Booker and associated prizes, the advent of the computer, have all conditioned authors’ subjects and working methods. Although the legacy of the social command and the habit of writing in opposition died hard, the period has produced much experimental writing, post-modernist or avant-garde in nature, as well as more conventionally realistic works. Previously taboo subjects such as the religious revival and explicit sexuality were frequently treated; questions relating to gender were discussed; events and writing of the Soviet period were revisited, and the need to amend or amplify the historical record was keenly felt. Furthermore, Russophone and non- ethnic Russian writers both in Russia and the former Soviet republics (e.g. Tatarstan, Chechnya, Ukraine, the Caucasus and Central Asia) have brought to the fore (post)colonial questions around national identity, race, centre-periphery, migration, language and the environment. The significantly diminished role of the creative intelligentsia in society, together with an overall lack of direction and coherence, has added to the unpredictability and excitement of the latest literature. For the late Soviet period, possible topics include: poetry and prose of the ‘Thaw’; samizdat (e.g. Erofeev); Gulag prose and poetry (Shalamov, Solzhenitsyn, Grossman, Vladimov); the late Soviet historical novel (Trifonov, Okudzhava, Aitmatov); women’s writing (Baranskaia, Petrushevskaia, Tolstaya); conceptualism in poetry and art (Prigov). For the latter, possible topics include Russophone writing (Yakhina, Bibish, Bagirov); (post-)colonialism (Makanin, Sadulaev); gender; dystopia and magical historicism.