RUSS 347. Late and Post-Soviet Culture.

The re-invention of Russian culture in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Featuring Soviet beatniks, dissidents, and cultural iconoclasts; covering pop-culture, Pepsi and PR, perestroika, and the encounter with Western postmodernism. In literature, the emergence of 'new’ voices (women’s prose, émigré writers), new or newly rediscovered genres (detective fiction, sci-fi, bard or sung poetry, the essay). In the visual arts, points of contact, overlap and competition with film, conceptualist or concrete poetry, installations, memes). For over two and a half centuries, Russian literature was seen as the cornerstone of cultural identity and national pride. How does it confront today the challenges of a post-literary age and, tenuously, post-Soviet age?