Russia Through Western Eyes

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

This course is grounded in the belief that without knowledge of the past one cannot understand the present. The course is based on a diversity of sources, including fiction, travelogues and variety of professional fields including history, political science, and journalism. Students will examine different and often opposing points of views on Russia’s past, present, and conceivably future. To complement class readings, the class also will view three films. A key goal of this course is to promote a better understanding of the role of Russia in today’s world by looking at the historical and present-day images of it in order to understand they have affected Russia’s relations with the West. An additional goal of the course is to help students think critically about modern political events in part through drawing on historical precedent. Historical analysis is at its core an examination of cause and effect and change over time. As the historian Robert B. Marks noted in book The Origins of the Modern World, “...a long-term historical perspective does enable us to draw some meaningful conclusions about the past and present and to make educated forecasts for the future.”