Dead Souls

Undergraduate / Graduate

Nikolai Gogol's "Dead Souls" (1842) is a satire, epic, travelogue, picaresque and tragicomedy wrapped in one hilarious novel. The petty scammer Chichikov, our protagonist, devises a get-rich-quick scheme, buying up recently deceased serfs ("souls") in order to appear wealthier than he really is, and offering a fascinating window into the beauty, as well as the depravity of Imperial Russia. Due to Gogol's dueling commitments to Ukrainian and Russian culture, Dead Souls is one of the only novels still read today in schools on both sides of the frontlines of the Russo-Ukrainian war. Does that make Gogol a faithful servant of empire, or a figure of cultural resistance and revival? We will read this beloved classic in English translation, paying close attention to the text's significance in explosive contemporary debates around identity, empire, and education.