Kurssilta voi olla poissa enintään 3 kertaa.

Kurssilta voi olla poissa enintään 3 kertaa.

Kurssilta voi olla poissa enintään 3 kertaa.

Kurssilta voi olla poissa enintään 3 kertaa.

Kurssilta voi olla poissa enintään 3 kertaa.

Kurssilta voi olla poissa enintään 3 kertaa.

Kurssilta voi olla poissa enintään 3 kertaa.

ERS/CBU students NB! Enrollment via NettiOpsu 22.8.-23.10.2011.

Kurssilta voi olla poissa enintään 3 kertaa.

Kurssilta voi olla poissa enintään 3 kertaa.

Kurssilta voi olla poissa enintään 3 kertaa.

Over the last 30 years a new distinctive trend has become apparent in fiction and visual arts which is often referred to as "horror genre". However, the specificity of this genre as well as a coherent explanation of its popularity has not been delivered yet by cultural studies. On the contrary, there are multiple explanations of the current popularity of vampires. Analyses of particularities of the "horror genre" and vampire fiction and movies will help conceptualize this new trend as "Gothic aesthetics".

In the first part of the course we will consider importance of vampires as the most popular nonhumans. Post-Soviet and the US vampires' bestsellers will be compared to analyze what the figure of monster signifies in contemporary culture. Differently from the US productions, post-Soviet fiction and movies populated by all kind of nonhuman monsters reveal the work of suppressed memory of Stalinism and describe a new social order emerging in post-Soviet Russia. The course will consider post-Soviet fiction and movies as a particular source to study historical memory.

The second part of the course will be focused on the origins of Gothic Aesthetics which departed from Gothic novel and works by Russian classical writers. We will examine why nightmares became am important theme for several outstanding writers such Charles Robert Maturin, Nikolay Gogol and Feodor Dostoevsky and how literary experiments conducted by these outstanding writers with their readers and their protagonists influenced contemporary culture. 

The course is organized in cooperation with Aleksanteri Institute's Russian and East European Master's School.

The course explores Soviet and post-Soviet Russian films in their ideological and imaginative relationships to different historical and political contexts. The course aims at making students familiar with how gender is used as an analytical tool in film analysis, and how feminist film theories can be used in specific contexts of film-production and various national film practices. The course will also examine how Soviet and Russian films of the 20th c. textually negotiated and re-negotiated conditions of being, belonging and becoming for gender and ethnic identity in Soviet trajectories of domination and subordination and post-Soviet transformations. The course will include discussions of politics of representation of gender, race and ethnicity in Soviet and Russian popular cinema of different genres (comedy, adventure, adaptation, historical and combat films) as venues for developing fantasies of cultural identity, gender normatives and racialiased social stereotypes. The course will particularly attend to the construction of race and Orientalist discourse in Soviet popular cinema.

The course is organized in cooperation with Aleksanteri Institute's Russian and East European Master's School.

This interdisciplinary course familiarizes students with the Russian gender system and its historical development from the Soviet era to the present day and with discussions in feminist theory and methodology. It traces gendering practices in different spheres of life and examines how gender intersects with other differences, such as nationality, ethnicity, sexuality, and class. It also examines how gender has demarcated the boundaries between the private and the public spheres at different times and political circumstances, and how gender has structured and been structured in social and cultural transformations. The course consists of lectures and group discussions based on course readings.

The course is organized in cooperation with Aleksanteri Institute's Russian and East European Master's School.