Teaching Documents

History of Modern Russia

The history of Russia has enlightened and confused.  It has brought hope and despair.  But most often it has fascinated those willing to take in its over 1000 year history.  This class is designed to provide some insight into this history by focusing on one of its most contentious periods, the 20th century.  Perhaps no nation has endured more than Russia in the 20th century.  It has survived three revolutions (1905, 1917, and 1989), two world wars (WWI, 1914-1918 and WWII, 1941-1945), a civil war (1918-1921), political, social, and economic upheaval, mass terror and political violence.  Many of these processes continue to impact Russia today as it looks to define its place in a globalized, integrated, but no less contentious, 21st century.

Youth as Janus-faced: a Historical Tale, 1700-Present (Course Proposal)

Franklin D. Roosevelt once remarked, “We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.”  This quote is indicative of the subaltern position of youth in society.  On the one hand youth are always temporally poised toward tomorrow.  They are beings in a state of becoming; immature human clay that “we” shape for “the future.”  On the other hand, they present a potential danger, a reflection of our anxieties and a measurement of the general health of the social body.

The proposed course examines the subaltern status of youth through an exploration of their historical and historiographical presence.  The course’s objectives are threefold.  First, it seeks to give freshmen a survey of the scholarly literature on young people as an important modern social category.  Second, it looks to uncover the ways youth as an historical subject is crafted through the binary prism of hope/danger in different periods and geographical locations.  Lastly, the course endeavors to explore youth cultures, politics, and practices in an attempt to take them from their subaltern position and posit them as a productive historical force in its own right.

Course_Proposal_Youth_new.doc

 

x

Log In

or reset password

Reset Password

Enter the email address you signed up with, and we'll send a reset password email to that address

Academia © 2012