Russian Orientalism in the Visual, Literary and Performing Arts, 1760-1940

Catalog description

This course investigates the ways in which Russia’s artistic praxis was impacted by encounters—both real and imagined—with the cultures and representational traditions of the so-called East. Given the country’s conflicted self-identification as neither fully European nor Asian, demarcations between the “self” and the “other” were more porous for Russian cultural practitioners than for their Western European counterparts, resulting in representations that were prone to hybridity, syncretism, and even self-Orientalization. Taking Edward Said’s definition of Orientalism as a point of departure, the course will examine the writings of Pushkin, Lermontov, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy; the paintings of Briullov, Aivazovskii, Vereshchagin, Polenov, Vrubel, Roerich, and Kuznetsov; and stage productions of The Tale of Tsar Saltan, Prisoner of the Caucasus, Scheherazade, and Les Orientales. Students will also engage with different theoretical positions and methodologies, including Marxist, feminist and subaltern critiques.