Course Syllabus

Russian/MEMS 391
Russian 551

Art, Culture, and Literature in Old Russia

A “Hybrid” Course

Fall Term, 2020 Tuesday, Thursday 4.00-5.30

1339 Mason Hall
and by Remote Participation

Instructor:

Michael Makin
(mlmakin@umich.edu)

Students who encounter problems accessing the course stream should send a text or WhatsApp message to 734-646-4821

Downloadable Syllabus: 391-551 Syllabus FT 20.docx

This course provides an introduction to the culture of the Eastern Slavs from the ninth century until the seventeenth, and looks briefly at the employment of elements of that culture in Russia from the nineteenth century until the present day.  It requires no special historical or linguistic knowledge and is intended to be of interest to anyone curious about medieval and early-modern culture.  While the primary emphasis will be on Old Russian literature, the course will also examine art, architecture, folklore, and other cultural forms.

            The course will help students to develop the analytical skills required for the examination of medieval and early-modern cultures (including basic tools of textual criticism and instrumentation to read symbolic languages very different from ours) and  to develop an understanding of cultural premises radically different from those on which post-Enlightenment Europe has relied.  The course will look at the East Slavs of Rus’ and Muscovy in comparison with the peoples around them and will also look at how post-Petrine Russia has turned again and again to “Old Russia” and, indeed, has, in some areas, shown remarkable continuity with that Old Russian past.

            Students will also develop skills in analytical writing, in treating both very specific, materials-based topics and broader, conceptual issues.

            Students taking this course at the graduate level (Russian 551) will meet with the instructor for one additional hour per week (via Zoom), time to be arranged, and will be expected to develop the appropriate language skills to work with assigned texts in the original.

This course will, after the first week, used a “flipped” format.  Course lectures will be recorded and made available via Canvas.  Students will be expected to have completed the core readings for each week and to have watched the relevant lectures before class meetings, which will consist primarily of discussions of the material and of the lectures.  Students may participate in class discussions either in the class room or remotely.  These discussions will, if technological problems are resolved, also be recorded so that students who cannot log in to live class discussions will be able to review them. 

Written assignments for undergraduates in the course are: three short papers (1,500 words each), and a final, longer paper (2,500-3,000 words).  The short papers are each worth 20% of the total grade, the final paper is worth 30%, while class participation is worth 10%.  The grades for class participation will be determined by student work related to the recorded lectures (which will include response and similar assignments) and by participation in class discussions.  Students participating remotely who have difficulties logging in to class discussions will be able to join specially organized virtual meetings to make up for missed live classes.   December class discussions will be exclusively remote.

Graduate students may design their own writing assignments, but should write a total of about 8,000 words over the semester.  They may write: a single, long research-based paper; a series of shorter discussion papers; a series of philological analyses; or work on other projects of their choice.  In all cases they should do so in consultation with the instructor

            Three books (supplemented by abundant materials posted to the Canvas course site) have been ordered for the course and are required purchases:

Serge Zenkovsky, Medieval Russia's Epics Chronicle and Tales, rev. ed. (Meridian Books, 1992; ISBN: 0452010861).

Carolyn Johnston Pouncy, tr., The Domostroi (Cornell UP, 1995; ISBN: 0801496896).

Archpriest Avvakum: The Life written by Himself, tr. K Brostrom (Michigan Slavic Translations, 1977).

 

 

             

 

SCHEDULE OF CLASSES:

 

SEPTEMBER

T 1       Introduction to course.  How this hybrid class will work.  Overcoming technical difficulties

Th  3    What are we studying?  What are the conceptual issues raised by the material we will examine?

 

Kievan Rus’

 

[From now on, lectures will be recorded and will be available to view ahead of classes.  Students should watch the lecture recordings, complete the assigned readings, and complete the response assignments included in recorded lectures, prior to the relevant discussions.  Students should be ready to discuss the reading and viewing assignments in class meetings]

 

T    8    Introduction to Kievan Rus’; introduction to the assigned materials.

Th 10 What is a chronicle?

 

T  15    The Primary Chronicle (extracts in Zenkovsky)

Th 17  The Primary Chronicle, conc.

 

T    22  Ilarion, Sermon on Law and Grace (Zenkovsky, Canvas).

Th  24  Lives of Sts Boris and Gleb (Multiple versions – one in Zenkovsky; others on Canvas).

 

T    29  Byzantine influences in sacred art and architecture; Russkaya Pravda – Russian Law (Materials on Canvas); “Ordinary” communications, ordinary literacy – the story of birch-bark writing (Canvas).   Liturgical music.

 

OCTOBER

 

Th 1    Conc.

Sun 4   First Paper Due

 

T    6   The Lay of Igor’s Campaign, (Zenkovsky, Canvas).

Th  8    conc.

     

The Tatar Yoke and the Rise of Muscovy

 

T    13 Battle on the River Kalka; Orison of the Downfall of Russia; Tale of the Destruction of Ryazan’ by Baty;  Life of Alexander Nevskii  (Zenkovsky)

Th  15  The Rise of Muscovy and the  “Second South Slavonic Influence”. 
Zadonshchina , Epifanii Premudrii, The Life of St Sergius of Radonezh, The Life of St Stepan of Perm’ (Zenkovsky, Canvas). Church building.  Iconography

 

 

T    20  “Second South Slavonic Influence”, conc.

Th  22  “Tale of the White Cowl”; Afanasii Nikitin, Journey Across Three Seas (Zenkovsky)

 

 

T    27  Ivan IV – Culture and Change (scholarly materials online); Ivan IV,  Correspondence with Ivan Kurbskii (texts and scholarly materials online).

Th  29  Domostroi  -- life in Muscovy

 

 

NOVEMBER

Seventeenth-century Culture

 

T    3    conc.

Th  5    Emergent Secular Literature. Beyond the elite: Tale of Woe and Misfortune, "The Tale of Savva Grudtsyn", "Frol Skobeev, the Rogue”, Tales of Possession.
The elite: Simeon Polotsky (Zenkovsky, Canvas).

Su  8    Second Paper Due

 

T    10  conc.

Th  12  The Schism (scholarly materials online). 
Life of the Archpriest Avvakum, Written by Himself (also scholarly materials online)

 

T    17  conc.

 

Old-Russian Culture and Modern Russia

 

Th 19  Folklore and paganism in modern Russia (materials online). Neo-Russian architecture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (materials online).  Hagiography and belles lettres in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (materials online).  Who owns “Old Russian Culture” today?
Third Paper Due

THANKSGIVING BREAK

 

DECEMBER

 

Only Remote Learning From Now Until the End of Classes

 

T    1    cont.

Th  3    conc.

 

T    8    Russian Icons.  Question and answer session with the Curator of the Museum of Russian Icons, Dr Lana Sloutsky (https://www.museumofrussianicons.org/curator/).   

 

 

W 10   Final Paper Due

Michael Makin
3016 MLB
Tel. 647-2142
E-mail: mlmakin@umich.edu
Virtual Office Hours:
M 11-12
F 12-1
or by appointment
(Sign up through the Advising Link on the Slavic Dept web site)