109-121 New Russia and Postmodernity

Credit Points

HECS Band

Coordinator

Prerequisites

Students are recommended to have completed 109-120 Post-perestroika Russia: Transformations but it is not essential.

Semester

Subject Description

Taught in English, this subject is an introduction to contemporary Russian culture, through films and literary texts, examined against the backdrop of the post-perestroika changes in the society of the New Russia and in a comparative (Western) perspective. Students should become familiar with topics such as the contemporary Russian popular culture, 'new sentimentality', pop art, gay subcultures, pornography and violence, Russian women, forms of social dominance, and the destruction of the Russian 'tradition' (as in Vladimir Sorokin's deconstruction of the Russian 19th century idyll). Discussion of these topics will draw on the theoretical discourses of psychoanalysis, feminism and poststructuralism.