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ANNA KARENINA AND HER WORLD   This interdisciplinary course investigates the nineteenth-century age of the Great Reforms (1861-1881) through the lens of one of the most famous novels in Russia’s classical literary canon, L. N. Tolstoi’s Anna Karenina. Originally serialized between 1875-1877, the novel provides a useful vantage point from which to examine issues connected to imperial Russian literary, social, cultural and political history, as well as the often difficult to assess subject of gender relations. Each unit pairs a discrete section of the novel with auxiliary primary and secondary sources that consider questions of rural gentry life, the literary and cultural scene in the capital cities, philosophical thought, the “woman question,” political radicalism, Tolstoi’s own political views, and the popular reception of the novel. A conference course, “Anna Karenina and Her World” alternates between background lectures on Mondays and discussions on Wednesdays. As such, attendance is mandatory—please contact the instructor ahead of time if you need to miss class for any reason. Attendance and participation in the discussions account for a third of the course’s grade. Five response papers of approximately 500 words in length are to be written sometime before reading period. These papers are to be based on question sets distributed by email several days before each discussion and are to be submitted to the instructor in hard copy by 5pm on the day before class. These papers account for a third of the course’s grade. Two major papers, the first 10 pp and the second 15 pp, are due at the end of the eighth week and during the final exam period. Topics for the first essay are scheduled to be distributed during the sixth week; topics for the second essay are to be crafted from scratch by students themselves in consultation with the instructor. These essays should be submitted in hardcopy and account for the final third of the course’s grade. Office hours are formally Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, 10-11am and 1:30-2:30, but appointments can be made by email for other times on Monday-Wednesday-Fridays as well. Don’t hesitate to take advantage of email to clarify basic information with the instructor concerning the seminar, readings, assignments, etc. CLASS SCHEDULE (e) indicates e-reserves WEEK 1 Monday, Aug 28: introduction; 19th cent. literature and society Wednesday, Aug. 30: discussion Geoffrey Hosking, “Literature as ‘Nation-Builder,’” in Russia: People and Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 286-311 (e) Gregory Freeze, “The Soslovie (Estate) Paradigm and Russian Social History,” American Historical Review 91:1 (1986): 11-36 (e) WEEK 2 Monday, Sept. 4: Moscow & St. Petersburg Wednesday, Sept. 6: discussion Anna Karenina, part 1, chapters 1-23 Sidney Monas, “St. Petersburg and Moscow as Cultural Symbols,” in Art and Culture in Nineteenth Century Russia, ed. Theofanis George Stavrou (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), 26-39 N. V. Gogol, “Nevsky Prospect” (e) WEEK 3 Monday, Sept. 11: the nobility Wednesday, Sept. 13: discussion Anna Karenina, part 1, chapters 24-34; part 2, chapters 1-11 Roberta Manning, “The Political Crisis of the Landed Gentry,” in The Crisis of the Old Regime in Russia (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1982), 25-44 (e) Gary Hamburg, “The Nobility as a Social Formation,” in Politics of the Russian Nobility, 1880-1905 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1984), pp. 9-19 (e) Seymour Becker, “The Decline of the Nobility,” in Nobility and Privilege in Late Imperial Russia (Dekalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 1985), 3-54 (e) WEEK 4 Monday, Sept. 18: military rank: pomp and circumstance Wednesday, Sept. 20: discussion Anna Karenina, part 2, chapters 12-29 William Fuller, “Military Professionalism, the Imperial War Ministry and the Officers,” in Civil Military Conflict in Imperial Russia, 1881-1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 3-46 (e) WEEK 5 Monday, Sept. 25: the agrarian question and political radicalism Wednesday, Sept. 27: discussion Anna Karenina, part 2, chapters 30-35; part 3, chapters 1-18 Isaiah Berlin, “Russian Populism,” in Russian Thinkers (New York: Penguin Books, 1978), 210-238 (e) Leopold Haimson, “The Background,” in The Russian Marxists and the Origins of Bolshevism (Boston: Beacon, 1966), 3-27 (e) WEEK 6 Monday, Oct. 2: visions of empire Wednesday, Oct. 4: discussion Anna Karenina, part 3, chapters 19-32 Daniel Brower, “Imperial Russia and its Orient: The Renown of Przhevalskii,” Russian Review 53:3 (1994): 367-381 (e) Andreas Kappeler, The Russian Empire: A Multi-Ethnic History, selections (e) WEEK 7 Monday, Oct. 9: the “woman question” Wednesday, Oct. 11: discussion topics distributed for paper one Anna Karenina, part 4, chapters 1-23 William Wagner, “The Trojan Mare: Women’s Rights and Civil Rights in Late Imperial Russia,” in Civil Rights in Imperial Russia, ed. Olga Crisp, Linda Edmondson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 65-84 (e) Barbara Alpern Engel, Women in Russia, 1700-2000, selections WEEK 8 Monday, Oct. 16: no class Wednesday, Oct. 18: Russian landscapes; discussion Anna Karenina, part 5, chapters 1-13 Elizabeth Valkenier, “The Institutional and Social Background” (etc.), in Russian Realist Art: State and Society: The Peredvizhniki and their Tradition (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1977), 3-97 (e) Chris Ely, This Meager Nature, selections Friday, Oct. 20 paper one due WEEK 9 Monday, Oct. 23: the radical intelligentsia Tuesday, Oct. 24: film screening: The State Councilor (Statskii sovetnik, F. Iankovskii, 2005) Wednesday, Oct. 25: discussion Anna Karenina, part 5, chapters 14-20 Vera Figner, Memoir of a Revolutionist (New York: Greenwood, 1971), 15-25, 33-90 (e) WEEK 10 Monday, Oct. 30: the bureaucracy Wednesday, Nov. 1: discussion Anna Karenina, part 5, chapters 21-33 Helju Aulik Bennett, “Chiny, Ordena, Officialdom,” in Russian Officialdom: The Bureaucratization of Russian Society from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century, ed. Walter McKenzie Pintner and Don Karl Rowney (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1980), 162-189 (e) WEEK 11 Monday, Nov. 6: the rural estate Wednesday, Nov. 8: discussion Anna Karenina, part 6, chapters 1-25 Priscilla Roosevelt, “Nests of Gentlefolk,” in Life on the Russian Country Estate: A Social and Cultural History (New Haven: YUP, 1995), 157-191, 317-334 (e) Hamburg, “Traditional Politics,” in Politics of the Russian Nobility, 1881-1905, 39-68 (e) WEEK 12 Monday, Nov. 13: intelligentsia vs. “society” Wednesday, Nov. 15: discussion Anna Karenina, part 7, chapters 1-22 James L. West, “The Riabushinskii Circle: Burzhuaziia and obshchestvennost’ in Late Imperial Russia,” in Between Tsar and People, eds. Edith Clowes et al. (Princeton: PUP, 1991), 42-56 (e) WEEK 13 Monday, Nov. 20: the end, pt. 1—discussion Wednesday, Nov. 22: no class Anna Karenina, part 7, chapters 24-31 Donna T. Orwin, Tolstoy’s Art and Thought, 1847-1880 (Princeton: PUP, 2001), 171-187, 200-203 (e) WEEK 14 Monday, Nov. 27: the end, pt. 2—discussion Wednesday, Nov. 29: Tolstoi’s reception, pt. 1—discussion Anna Karenina, part 8, chapters 1-19 Anna Karenina, appendix: letters, diaries, articles through Merezhkovskii (741-778) WEEK 15 Monday, Dec. 4: Tolstoi’s reception, pt. 2—discussion Tuesday, Dec. 5: film screening: Anna Karenina (A. Zarkhi, 1967) Wednesday, Dec. 6: print vs. celluloid—discussion Anna Karenina, appendix: articles from Eikhenbaum to end (778-859) Monday, Dec. 18 paper two due