The Eighteenth Century and its Legacies

This course investigates the dynamic complexity of the visual and literary culture produced and consumed in eighteenth-century Russia during the age of the Enlightenment. Students will consider the rise of an aristocratic patronage system and the proliferation of new educational institutions, such as universities, social assemblies and the Imperial Academy of Arts. The emergence of new genres in art (history painting, portraiture, landscapes, and genre scenes) and literature (ode and elegy, satire, drama, fiction and critical prose) will also be discussed in detail. Other key topics will include courtly culture, women and power, representation and empire, and intersections between art, literature and philosophy. The course will conclude with an investigation of the ambivalent status of the eighteenth century in discourses on Russian modernity and its legacy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Advanced Russian reading skills required.