Russian Empire and the Family Ideal: History and Literature

(SPRING 2027)

Course Description:

This course introduces students to the social, political, and literary history of the Russian Empire through the conceptual frame of the “family ideal.” Familial rhetoric and symbolism did not simply suffuse 19th-century Imperial Russia’s rhetoric of rule; it also accurately reflected the extent to which familial networks, practices and ruptures played a role in both justifying the empire and rebelling against it. Pairing landmark works of history with 19th-century family novels of varying degrees of fame, this course will explore the final century of the Russian Empire across topics that include migration, estate management, child rearing, religion, nationalism, divorce, emancipation, and revolution.

Key Authors:

HISTORY/THEORY

Pierre Bourdieu

Alexander Martin

Catriona Kelly

Nikolai Turgenev

Ben Eklof & Tatiana Saburova

John Randolph

Margarita Vaysman

Barbara Alpern Engel

Katherine Pickering Antonova

Alexa von Winning

Katie Turton

Fabian Baumann

LITERATURE

Avdotya Panaeva

Sergei Aksakov

Ivan Turgenev

Sofia Khvoshchinskaya

Nikolai Chernyshevsky

Lev Tolstoy

Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Alexander Kazbegi

Maxim Gorky

Volodymyr Vynnychenko