109-122 Russian Modernism and Postmodernism

Credit Points

HECS Band

Coordinator

Prerequisites

European studies students wishing to enrol in this subject would normally have completed first year European studies, see Prerequisites.

Semester

Contact

Subject Description

Taught in English, this subject will focus on the dominant modes of representation in contemporary Russian fiction, drama, and film in order to answer the question: what is (Russian) postmodernism? Students will examine the relationship of postmodernism to its antecedents in Russian and European literature and culture, and re-examine some texts of the Socialist Realist period through a postmodern perspective. The significance of violence and pornography in contemporary Russian fiction will be considered in the context of the poetics of 'magic realism', of 'zero degree' prose and of an aesthetics of the heterogeneous. Manifestos of Russian postmodernism as well as Russian Conceptualist art will be analysed in a comparative Western (pop-art) context. On completion of the subject students should have become acquainted with approaches to the study of cultural texts in the general context of postmodernity as it relates to the phenomenon of the New Russia.

Assessment

Written work totalling 4000 words comprising a 1500 word class paper and a 2500 word essay.

Prescribed Texts

• A Bitov, Pushkin House. Farrar Strauss & Giroux, 1987.
• M Bulgakov, The Master and Margaita. Harvill, 1988.
• V Erofeeev, Moscow to the End of the Line (Moskva-Petushki). Writers and Readers Pub Cooperative, 1981.
• A Bely, Petersburg. Penguin Books.
• L Petrushevskaia, S Mulrine (trans), Three Girls in Blue. Nick Hern Books, 1991.
• T Tolstaya, On the Golden Porch. Penguin, 1989.
• T Tolstaya, Sleepwalker in a Fog. Vintage, 1993.
• M Epstein, A Genis & M Vladiv-Glover, Russian Postmodernism: New Perspectives on Post-Soviet Culture. Berghahn Books, 1999.
• Y Dombrovsky, The Faculty of Useless Objects. Harvill Press, 1996.