Russian Visual Culture

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

This course examines recent scholarship in Russian history grounded in close analysis of images and visual texts, such as religious icons, maps, paintings, folk art, advertising, photography, film, architecture, and public spectacle. Specifically, it investigates the role of visual experience and seeing in relation to imperial Russian and Soviet state power, and in shaping modern understandings of self. The course also explores various approaches to studying 'the visual' pioneered by anthropologists, sociologists, art historians, and media theorists. This will help our seminar to develop a set of conceptual tools for analyzing images during the semester, while considering the status of different types of visual sources for historical research. Although focused on twentieth-century image-making, the course also touches on Russia's medieval and early modern histories. Its methodological remit is global in scope.