Religion, Marriage and Gender in Russian Culture and Literature

With Russia as our case study, in this course we will examine the cultural history of marriage as an ecclesiastical and popular religious institution and as a nucleus of debates regarding ecclesiastical authority, popular piety, secularization, modernization, and gender. Examining the dissemination of the ecclesiastical view, we will consider the role of secular literature in challenging official views and practices. We will also examine marriage as folk religious practice and its role in the social thought of the intelligentsia and study its influence on the concepts of gender, sexuality and the body through interaction with European theology and literature.