Nuclear Narratives in (Post-)Soviet Lite

Literature and film provide critical reflections on how nuclear technology and its dangers have shaped Soviet and post-Soviet imaginations and worldviews. This course draws from multiple literary and creative narratives that respond to the region’s nuclear history, tracing how official discourse was first subverted by dissident narratives, and then, over the course of the Perestroika period (1985–1991), subsumed within them. Alongside disasters like Chernobyl, we will investigate nuclear legacies across the former Soviet sphere, including in Kazakhstan, where the Soviet government detonated more than 450 nuclear tests over a forty-year period, and in Lithuania, where inhabitants of a former “nuclear city” still live as if beyond history’s reach. How did artistic narratives shape Soviet nuclear realities, and vice versa? How have nuclear concerns fostered cultural exchange and solidarity in unexpected ways? These questions will guide our inquiry.

While works of literature, film, and art from the (post-)Soviet world take precedence, the course seeks to situate them within their international geopolitical and cultural contexts; as such, some key works from other cultural spaces will be considered as points of comparison or as relevant primary texts. Classes will include both lecture and discussion elements; each class period will be devoted to a broad aspect shared among the assigned readings and will focus on determining what each work sought to achieve within its own cultural-historical context. Assignments will be approximately 100–150 pages or two to three viewing hours per class period. In addition, there will be a weekly film screening, with approximately two (and sometimes more) screen hours of film.

Weekly written responses will be supplemented on occasion with short interactive assignments. Each student is expected to give one 10-to-12-minute presentation during the semester on a major theme from a given week’s assigned materials; the presentation will serve as a genesis for wider discussion. There will be one midterm essay (responses to be four to six pages in length) due at the end of Week 6. One final essay (responses to be eight to ten pages in length) will be due during the exam period at the end of the semester.