Specific topics may satisfy different Core Program requirements.
Crime and Punishment in Russian History
Crime and punishment constitute not only the title of a classic Russian novel, but an enduring theme in Russian history. Russian art and literature are rich in scenes of exile and incarceration, and the history of a modernizing state’s efforts to control both crime and dissent through judicial systems reveals the shifting boundaries of its power over its people. At a moment when Americans are increasingly questioning policing and mass incarceration in their own country, this course offers students a way to understand how crime and punishment have been constructed in a different historical context.
Russian and Soviet practices of punishment have often embodied acute clashes of values between different social, national, and ideological groups. Actions deemed criminal by one group may be seen as justified, even admirable, by another. The course will deepen students’ understanding of those values as well as familiarizing them with the lived experiences of people whose circumstances or convictions led them to courts, exile, and incarceration. Using novels, poetry, memoirs, film, archival and visual materials, we will consider such questions as: How did peasants avoid or invoke the Tsarist state to order their communal lives? How did revolutionaries use the jury trial to propagate their ideas? Why did Marxists believe that a socialist state would have no need for a legal system? How did prisoners in the Gulag make sense of their experiences? How have crime and corruption shaped post-Soviet society? Assessment will include participation in class discussion, short written assignments, and a final project. This course meets the Regional Focus (CPRF) requirement.
Russian and Soviet History since the Nineteenth Century
This course covers an epic set of events in Russian history from the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 to the rise of Vladimir Putin in the 21st century. Spanning a century and a half of upheaval and transformation, it examines what happened when workers and peasants tried to create a new society built on social justice and economic equality. The course surveys the revolutions in 1917, the ruthless power struggles of the 1920s, the triumph of Stalin, the costly industrialization and collectivization drives, the “Great Terror,” and the battle against fascism in World War II. It then examines the Cold War, the Soviet Union’s efforts to reform itself, the economic chaos of the 1990s, and resurgent nationalism and authoritarianism in the information age. We’ll reflect not only on high politics and power struggles, but also on how everyday life and culture developed in times of unprecedented change. This course meets the Regional Focus (CPRF) requirement.
U.S. Presidents and First Ladies
This course provides an overview of the origin and subsequent development of the position of U.S. President and that of First Lady from the eighteenth century to the present. The class meetings center around significant U.S. Presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan. In addition, we will consider historically important First Ladies: Martha Washington, Dolley Madison, and Eleanor Roosevelt among them. Special attention will be paid to how the offices of the U.S. President and First Lady have evolved over time; when U.S. Presidents and First Ladies have provided leadership in moments of national crisis; and what Americans have come to expect of their leaders.