RUSS 24001 - Imagining Siberia

Course Credit: 1
(ENVS)
IMAGINING SIBERIA Russia is the largest country in the world, occupying more than 10% of the world’s landmass. Siberia makes up almost 80% of Russia’s territory. Famous for its harsh winters, vast forests and steppes, and notorious prison complexes, Siberia features prominently in the Russian cultural imagination. This course focuses on geo-political and cultural space of Siberia as reflected in Russian literature, film, and environmental writing, and will examine the history of Siberia’s imperial conquest, its setting as a site of socialist construction and topographical experimentation, its labor camp legacy, the famous Trans-Siberian Railroad and the native traditions that have been preserved to this day. We will read works by Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Solzhenitsyn among others. [AH, C, D, GE]