Graduate Studies

Core Course Outline - Michaelmas Term 2012

The Core Course runs continuously throughout the Michaelmas term and is attended by all students. It is designed to provide you with key skills and knowledge for further research in the field. It will give you a framework - theoretical, historical and conceptual - within which to situate your specific research material.

The central part of the course consists of five double sessions: a lecture introducing the topic and a practical seminar or class for which you will be given specific material to prepare. Each of the five sessions will introduce you to a different disciplinary or theoretical approach to material. Work prepared for the classes in the Core Course will also develop your skills in the close reading of different types of primary texts and secondary texts, combining formal analysis with contextual and theoretical considerations appropriate to the discipline.

In addition to the five double sessions the Core Course includes a single session introducing you to the practicalities of library-based research into Russian material, a single session on internet-based research, and a double session academic writing skills.

Preparatory Resources and Informaiton

• Core Course Reading List (resources listed for each section of the Core Course)
• Course Timetable for the times and locations of Core Course sessions (to be added for the start of the Michaelmas Term 2012)

Core Course Schedule:

Block 1. Working with Documents, Dr Jana Howlett
Documents may speak eloquently, but scholars have to be sceptical of the idea that documents 'speak for themselves', of the idea that the presentation of documents is in itself an adequate representation of a subject. A significant proportion of research in the Humanities is therefore based on the study, interrogation and interpretation of documents. These seminars intruduce you to key aspects of such study and interpretation, in a range of Russian contexts. However, before we can consider what to do with documents, we have to consider three essential preliminary questions.

The first question relates to definitions, and hence to the scope of the subject. What is a 'document'? In the narrowest sense, the label 'document' is applied to formal written records produced by legislative, juridical, administrative and commercial bodies and other institutions. In the broadest sense 'document' us used, in effect, as a synonym of 'source': that is, as the primary evidence for whatever is being investigated.

The second general question relates to the forms and versions of individual documents. Each category of document may be accessible in many states: from early discarded manuscript drafts, through approved official or authorial texts, to subsequent selections and annotated editions. What can or should the researcher do with such variety? Which version is 'real'? In what sense? The third general question relates to the document as physical object: for the scholar, a document is not just 'about' its explicit theme. Its physical properties, materials, state or format may also be revealing in quite other ways.

In these seminars we will start with broad issues of definition and approach, but the main emphasis will be practical. In the first session we will look at various types of document and at ways of analysing them. For the second session, students will prepare their own presentations based on specific documents allocated to them for investigation.

Block 2. Critical Practices in History, Dr Julie Fedor
These two sessions will be geared first and foremost towards encouraging and inspiring students to engage with historical debates and produce critical evaluations of different historical interpretations. Students will develop their critical and analytical skills via exposure to a range of different approaches to the history of the Soviet Union (a topic which is ideally suited for this purpose, since the related debates have often been so fiercely polemical). The preliminary reading list has been complied with this aim in mind, and brings together some of the most stimulating and provocative historical writing in the field.

In the first session, students will be introduced to the key historical debates of the Cold War period. The second session will examine the contemporary state of historiography of the Soviet period, with a particular focus on the current debates taking place in Russia itself, and the interconnections between history, identity and memory.

The reading list has been planned with a view to making this a 'fresh' course; often the longer-running Soviet history courses tend to make use of syllabi that date from the Cold War. But the latest generations of historians of Russia have moved beyond the old debates and are producing exciting research into new fields of Soviet history, drawing upon newly available archival materials and asking new questions about the old materials. These recent histories form a substantial part of the reading list. Secondary literature will be supplemented by selected primary sources (in Russian and English), and the latter will be used to introduce students to various methodological problems involved in researching Soviet history.

Block 3. Critical Practices in Anthropology. Dr Nikolai Sssorin-Chaikov
In these sessions, we explore the Soviet/Russian state and relations of power from the anthropological perspective. We examine what is culturally specific about the Soviet/Russian statehood, and how ethnography has been used in the analysis of relations of power, subjectivity and cultural identity. Discussions will consider anthropological case studies and the the anthropological understanding of the concepts of 'culture' and 'power'.

Block 4. Critical Practices in Visual Culture. Dr Susan Larsen
What can images tell us? How might we go about ‘reading’ them? Does it even make sense to talk about visual material with the vocabulary that we use to discuss literary texts? Are there any forms of cultural production that are not somehow ‘visual’? Do art historians and social historians ask the same questions when they look at a photograph? Do media scholars and sociologists see the same things when they watch a film or browse the web? Do anthropologists and architectural historians take the same notes when they look at a city street? Why, or why not? These are some of the questions that this block will ask you to consider as we examine the methodological and critical questions associated with the ‘visual turn’ in cultural studies. The principal goal of these sessions, however, is pragmatic: they aim to help students formulate strategies for approaching both the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of looking –at objects, at spaces and built environments, at still and moving images – as a mode of scholarly inquiry. In the first session we will discuss several key theoretical statements and case studies in the analysis of visual material from a wide range of historical periods and disciplinary perspectives. For this session each student will be asked to prepare a brief analysis of cover images from the widely circulated Soviet journal Ogonek. In the second session we will focus on single ‘case study’: the treatment of Soviet monuments in post-Soviet film and visual art in the first half of the session. The second hour will be devoted to student presentations on some item of visual material that is relevant to their own research.

Block 5. Critical Practices in Literature. Dr Rebecca Reich
A clearly defined methodological approach is key to theoretically informed literary analysis. These two sessions will map out a range of literary approaches with attention to Nikolai Gogol’’s 1842 story “Shinel’” and Andrei Platonov’s 1937 story “Reka Potudan’.” Through reading and oral presentations, students will investigate these theoretical frameworks while questioning their limits and proposing models of their own.

The first seminar examines critical approaches to Nikolai Gogol’s 1842 story “Shinel’,” or “The Overcoat.” The reading list provides a selection of theoretically informed readings of the work. Please prepare for session one by reading the story and essential critical texts. During the first seminar, you will summarise and discuss the methodological approach that each critical text exemplifies.   

The second seminar suggests potential approaches to Andrei Platonov’s 1937 story “Reka Potudan’,” or “The Potudan River.” We will discuss a set of theoretical essays that do not pertain to Platonov specifically yet raise theoretical questions about such topics as narrative, gender, psychoanalysis, ideology, language, and discourse.

Students are advised to read at least the two primary texts for these sessions over the summer.  They are also urged to get started on the critical reading that seems most relevant to their own research projects. 

NB:  Dr Reich will email students directly with guidelines for the selection and analysis of critical and theoretical texts for each session.