The story of Christianity among the East Slavs (the peoples we now call the Russians, the Ukrainians, and the Belorussians) is long, complex, and often contradictory. This course looks at that story from the arrival of Greek Christianity among the people of Medieval Rus’ to the situation of Eastern Orthodoxy in Russia and Ukraine today, its relations to the state and to other confessions on the territories of the Russian Federation and Ukraine. Students will be asked to read a diverse body of materials – from medieval chronicles and Saints’ lives to modern scholarship, and journalism; to look at the material culture of Eastern Orthodox Christianity in the East Slavic lands (church buildings, frescoes, iconography); and to look at visual arts and films relevant to the story of Orthodoxy in the East Slavic lands. The course presupposes no prior knowledge of the history or culture of the Slavic world, not any religious affiliation whatsoever. The course aims to develop analytical skills suitable for interrogating a diverse body of cultural materials, ancient and modern.