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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.

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.

What sort of topics, research questions, approaches, theories and concepts lead to an integration of various kinds of knowledges? Ecological Humanities provides a conceptual platform for a merger of humanities and social sciences with earth and life sciences, soil science and forensic sciences. The course will discuss such selected topics as the Anthropocene, geologic/mineral and exhumed subjects/personae, bio- and geosocial collectives, symbiotic life-forms, non-human agencies, and forensic landscapes as examples of this merger.

A quarter-century from the fall of the Berlin Wall, we have gained broad perspective on the challenges of wholesale transformations away from socialism. This course explores the process and social consequences of opening the economies of Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and China to market forces. We will answer questions about how individuals and social systems respond to the particular challenges of rapid economic and political openings, including demographic challenges, corruption, nationalism, and growing inequality. We will compare the Eastern European and Post-Soviet experiences of these issues with the Chinese experience, and highlight the similarities and distinctions between transformations in these societies.