1 - 10 of 23 results for: REES

This course examines the historical roots of contemporary Russian Jewish culture and identity in North America, Israel, and the former Soviet Union: from the Russian Revolution through the collapse of the USSR. The course also emphasizes the story of Soviet Jewish migration and diaspora; it explores the anxieties of immigration and acceptance, the wages of acculturation and assimilation, and the interplay between cultural displacement and nostalgia. Following a highly interdisciplinary approach, this course introduces a wide range of printed, visual, and oral sources, including contemporary Russian Jewish fiction and Soviet war journalism, Soviet cartoons, photography, art, film, music, and archival materials. Students will conduct oral histories with Soviet emigres and taste (and cook) food from the Soviet Jewish kitchen. The course investigates questions particular to the Jewish experience, but also universal concerns about identity, migration, and diaspora in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. All readings are in English. Priority given to history majors and minors.

Enrollment limited to REEES students. Scholars present analyses of methodologies, challenges, and current issues in the study of Russia, E. Europe, and Eurasia.

From its inception, Jewish-American literature has taken as its subject as well as its context the idea of Jewishness itself. Jewish culture is a diasporic one, and for this reason the concept of Jewishness differs from country to country and across time. What stays remarkably similar, though, is Jewish self-perception and relatedly Jewish literary style. This is as true for the first-generation immigrant writers like Isaac Bashevis Singer and Anzia Yezierska who came to the United States from abroad as it is for their second-generation children born in the United States, and the children of those children. In this course, we will consider the difficulties of displacement for the emigrant generation and their efforts to sustain their cultural integrity in the multicultural American environment. We'll also examine the often comic revolt of their American-born children and grandchildren against their (grand-)parents nostalgia and failure to assimilate. Only by considering these transnational roots can one understand the particularity of the Jewish-American novel in relation to mainstream and minority American literatures. In investigating the link between American Jewish writers and their literary progenitors, we will draw largely but not exclusively from Russia and the countries of Eastern Europe.

Enrollment limited to REEES students. Scholars present analyses of methodologies, challenges, and current issues in the study of Russia, E. Europe, and Eurasia.

This course explores the cities of the Habsburg, Ottoman and Russian empires in the dynamic and turbulent period of their greatest transformation from the 19th century through the Two World Wars. Through the reading of urban biographies of Venice and Trieste, Vienna, Budapest, Cracow, Lviv, Sarajevo, Belgrade, Salonica, and Odessa, we consider broad historical trends of political, economic, and social modernization, urbanization, identity formation, imperialism, cosmopolitanism, and orientalism. As vibrant centers of coexistence and economic exchange, social and cultural borderlands, and sites of transgression, these cities provide an ideal lens through which to examine these themes in the context of transition from imperial to post-imperial space.

A quarter century ago, the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended. At the time, Russian leaders aspired to build democratic and market institutions at home. They also wanted to join the West. American presidents Democrat and Republican encouraged these domestic and international changes. Today, U.S.-Russia relations are once again confrontational, reminiscent of relations during the Cold War. This course seeks to analyze shifts in U.S.-Russia relations, with special attention given to the U.S.-Russia relationship during Obama¿s presidency. Readings will include academic articles and a book manuscript by Professor McFaul on Obama's reset policy. Open to students with previous coursework involving Russia.

(Formerly IPS 231A) Today, American-Russian relations, and Russia¿s relations with West more generally, are tense and confrontational. One has to look deep into the Cold War to find a similar era of confrontation and competition. Yet, relations between Russia and the West were not always this way. The end of the Cold War, for instance, ushered in a period of cooperation. Back then, many believed that Russia was going to develop democratic and market institutions and integrate into Western international institutions. This seminar will examine various explanations for these variations in Russia¿s relations with the West, starting in the 19th century, and briefly examining the Cold War period, but a real focus on the last thirty years. In evaluating competing explanations. the course will focus on balance of power theories, culture, historical legacies, institutional design, and individual actors in both the United States (and sometimes Europe) and Russia.nn** NOTE: The enrollment of the class is by application only. Please send a one page document to Anya Shkurko (ashkurko@stanford.edu) by March 23rd with the following information: full name, class year, major, contact email, which version of the course you want to enroll in (PoliSci/REES/IPS). In the document please also outline previous associated coursework and/or relevant experience and write why you want to enroll in the seminar. Application results will be announced on March 30th. Any questions related to this course can be directed to Anya Shkurko.

Russian politicians who support the country's law against so-called "gay propaganda" have repeatedly defended the restriction of LGBTQ rights. They claim that sexual minorities are antonymous to Russian "traditional values"', and some have even suggested that homosexuality should be re-criminalized altogether. This course explores the place of sexual minorities within Russian "tradition" by tracing laws regulating sex from the medieval period to the present day.

( History 224A is an undergraduate course offered for 5 units; History 424A is a graduate course offered for 4-5 units.) Socialist visions and practices of the organization of society and messianic politics; the Soviet understanding of mass violence, political and ethnic; and living space. Primary and secondary sources. Research paper or historiographical essay.