Texts:
Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, Sergei Eisenstein
The State and Revolution, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Robert Service, translator)
Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema, Andrey Tarkovsky
Yuri Norstein And Tale of Tales: An Animator's Journey, Clare Kitson
The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov, (Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky, translators)
Crossing Centuries: The New Generation In Russian Poetry, John Alexander High (Editor)
Journey into the Whirlwind, Eugenia Ginzburg
The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central-Eastern Europe, Vaclav Havel, John Keane (editor)
Plus handouts/downloads tba.
Workshops:
Students will chose one of three workshops that focus more closely on aspects of program content:
Leonard’s Poetry Workshop will involve weekly writing exercises, the writing of original poems, and a series of readings in contemporary Russian poetry in translation and American poetry influenced by those translations.
Pat’s Literature and History Workshop, will explore in greater depth the historical background of the Soviet period in Russia and East Central Europe as portrayed largely through several selections of Russian and East European prose literature, as well as films and documentaries.
Ruth’s Animation Workshop will investigate visual approaches to making meaning used by animators whose works we view. Students should expect to spend up to $100 on materials.
Syllabus:
Week 1: Setting the Context
Monday Focus: Introductions, Norstein’sTale of Tales
Seminar: Encountering Artists’ Works
Series: Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev
Wed: The Pre-Revolutionary Historical Context: Russia and East Central Europe (Pat)
Week 2: The Avant Garde meets the Revolution
Monday Focus: Modernism and Mass Culture in Europe and Russia (Pat, Leonard & Ruth)
Seminar: Lenin’s The State and Revolution
Series: Vertov’s Three Songs of Lenin, and Man With a Movie Camera
Wed: Read excerpts from Eisenstein’s Film Form before our screening of The Battleship Potemkin
Week 3: Socialist Realism and the Individual’s Response
Monday Focus: How Russian Literature of the 1920s Gave Way to Socialist Realism (Pat)
Seminar: Tarkovsky’s Sculpting in Time
Series: Visiting Animator Nina Shorina
Wednesday: tba
Week 4: The Stalinist Purges
Monday Focus: The Gulag (Pat)
Seminar: Ginzburg’s Journey Into the Whirlwind
Series: Soviet Animated Propaganda
Wed: Fear and the Muse: the Story of Anna Akhmatova (doc.), animated paranoid realities (Trnka et al)
Weekend: (required) The Threepenny Opera, on-campus performance, details tba.
Week 5: The Inheritance of Stalin: Writing as Survival
Monday Focus: Personal and Collective Memory (Ruth and Leonard)
Seminar: Kitson’s Yuri Norstein And The Tale of Tales, excerpts from Crossing Centuries
Series: Genya Turovskaya, visiting speaker
Wednesday: Translation and Specificities of Russian Language
Week 6: The Bizarre as Resistance
Monday Focus: Bulgakov and What Can Help Us Read The Master and Margarita (Pat)
Seminar: Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita
Series: Animation by Lenica, Borowczyck, and Schabenbeck
Wednesday: tba
Week 7: Post WW2 Russia and Eastern Europe: Subjugation and Resistance
Monday Focus: The Revolutions of 1989, visiting lecturer Magda Costantino
Seminar: Havel’s Power of the Powerless and other selected essays from that volume
Series: Czech Puppetry, Surrealism and other forms of resistance
Wednesday: tba
Week 8: Solidarnosc: Eastern Europe Rebels
Seminar: Moritz, “Narrative Strategies for Resistance and Protest in Eastern European Animation”
Series: Animation by Dumala and Bibanska
Wednesday: tba
Week 9: The Transition to the Post Soviet Era
Monday Holiday
Wednesday: The Estonians, Animation by Igor Kovalyov
Week 10: Completing the Circle
Focus & Seminar: tba
Series: Return to Rublev
Wednesday: tba
Requirements for full credit:
• Adhere to program covenant, including on-time attendance at all program activities
• Maintain a Response Journal that includes notes from lectures, films and literature presented
• Write a comparative essay due week 8
• Turn in your portfolio at the end of quarter
• Write a self-evaluation and attend an evaluation conference
• Complete seminar and workshop projects as assigned
