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HU Credits:
2
Degree/Cycle:
2nd degree (Master)
Responsible Department:
School of Arts
Semester:
2nd Semester
Teaching Languages:
Hebrew
Campus:
Mt. Scopus
Course/Module Coordinator:
Prof. Edwin Seroussi
Dr. Olga Levitan
Dr. Nina Rudnik
Coordinator Office Hours:
Tuesdays, 16:15-17:15
Teaching Staff:
Prof Edwin Seroussi
Dr. Olga Levitan
Dr. Nina Rudnick
Course/Module description:
Interpreting the urban space as an artistic text is a central trend in the contemporary intellectual discourse. The seminar will discuss the "Petersburgian text" as this concept has been developed in Russian semiotics on the background of urban studies beginning from the Renaissance and up to the cultural theories of the 20th century. The"cultural biography" of St. Petersburg will be at the center of the discussion and will engage students directly with works of art that shaped and continue to shape St. Petersburg's landscape in architecture, art, literature, theater, cinema, and music. The seminar will include analyses of masterpieces and artistic processes in Russian culture through the study of the city, acquaint the students with trends in the multi-disciplinary research discourse of urban studies, and offer a direct encounter with the city's inhabitants and artists.
Course/Module aims:
• To investigate a city as an inter-textual cultural phenomenon and as an artistic text.
• To analyze masterpieces and artistic processes in Russian culture through the study of the city.
• To become acquainted with the main trends in the multi-disciplinary research of urban spaces, and to experience a direct encounter with the city's residents and artists.
Learning outcomes - On successful completion of this module, students should be able to:
The students will be able to discuss the urban space as a meeting place of the various arts, to understand major processes in Russian history and literature and to learn about the mutual relations between Russian culture and the arts.
Attendance requirements(%):
90 % of the classes in Jerusalem and participation in the field trip to Saint Petersburg
Teaching arrangement and method of instruction:
Frontal lectures with active participation of the students, viewing and discussing recordings of music, theater, opera, and ballet. A tour of St. Petersburg at the end of May, 2015, will include presentations by each student throughout the tour as well as encounters with artists and citizens from St. Petersburg.
Course/Module Content:
1. Introduction: The city as laboratory. The Model “Moscow – St. Petersburg” as a starting point of Petersburg text in Russian culture.
2. The Petersburg text. Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoyevsky: “The Bronze Horseman”: Pushkin and the foundation of Petersburg text; Gogol’s Myth of the City; St. Petersburg in Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”
3. The Petersburgian performance: The Imperial Theater and Petersburgian ballet: Petipa, Fokin, Diaghilev; Meyerhold and the Petersburgian cabaret, the Futurist theater; the cinematic image of the city
4. The opera of St. Petersburg
5. Between folklore and nationalism at the turn of the 20th century: The national school of Jewish music and the Society for Jewish Folk Music in St. Petersburg as a case study
6. St. Petersburg as a center of Jewish modernity: Shimon Dubnow, Shlomo An-sky, the Jewish Chamber Theater, Synagogues
7. Study in St. Petersburg: The Petersburgian atmosphere; Acmeist poetry: Akhmatova and Mandelstam; Currents in modernistic art: From the "World of Art" movement to Futurism.
Required Reading:
Mikchail Beizer. The Jews of St. Petersburg. Excursions through a Noble Past. Philadelphia: Edward. E. Elson book, 1989.
John E. Bowlt. Moscow and St. Petersburg 1900-1920: Art, Life and Culture of the Russian Silver Age. New York: Vendome Press, 2008.
Julie A. Buckler. Mapping St. Petersburg: Imperial Text and Cityshape. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.
J. Douglas Clayton. Pierrot in Petrograd. Commedia dell’Arte / Balagan in Twentieth Century Russian Theatre and Drama. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994 (JSTOR).
Boris Gasparov. Five Operas and s Symphony. Word and Music in Russian Culture. Yale: Jale University Press, 2005.
Michael Finke. “Myth of the New Millenium: Visions of Petersburg in Recent Russian Cinema” in From Petersburg to Bloomington. Ed. John Barthe, Michael Finke, Vadim Liaponov. Bloomington. Indiana: Slavica Publishers, 2012.
Frank Hartwig. “The Beehive Metaphor and the Amber Room in the Catherine Palace of Tzarskoye Selo”, Northen Lights: Social Philosophies and Utopias of the Enlightenment in Northern Europe and Russia. St. Petersburg – Helsinki: St. Petersburg Centre for the History of Ideas, Vol. 39, 2013.
Catriona Kelly. St. Petersburg: Shadows of the Past. Yale University Press, 2014.
Katalin Kroo. “N.P. Antsiferov’s The Spirit of St. Peterburg” in From Petersburg to Bloomington. Ed. John Barthe, Michael Finke, Vadim Liaponov. Bloomington. Indiana: Slavica Publishers, 2012.
James B. Loeffler. The Most Musical Nation: Jews and Culture in the Late Russian Empire. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010.
George Munro. The Most Intentional City: St. Petersburg in the Reign of Catherine the Great. Madison (N.J.): Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2008.
Robert M. Seltzer. Dubnov’s New Judaism: Diaspora, Nationalism and the World History of the Jews. Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2014.
Georg Simmel. “The Metropolis and Mental Life.” In: The Sociology of Georg Simmel, adapted by D. Weinstein from Kurt Wolff (Trans.). New York: Free Press, 1950, pp.409-424. http://www.altruists.org/static/files/The%20Metropolis%20and%20Mental%20Life%20(Georg%20Simmel).htm
Mark D. Steinberg. Petersburg Fin de Siècle. The Darkening Landscape of Modern Time, 1905-1917. Yale University Press, 2011.
Richard Stites. “Strolls Through Postmodern Petersburg: Celebrating the City in 2003” in Preserving Petersburg: History, Memory, Nostalgia. Ed. Helena Gosailo, Stephen Narris. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008.
Н.П. Анциферов. Непостижимый город… СПб.: Лениздат, 1991.
В.Н. Топоров. Петербургский текст русской литературы. СПБ. Искусство.
Additional Reading Material:
Walter Benjamin. “Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire” in W. Benjamin. Selected Writings. Vol. 4, 1938–1940. Belknap, Harvard, 2003, pp. 3–92.
Rolf Hellesylt. “The Real St. Petersburg”, Russian Review. Vol. 62, no 4 (2003).
Grigory Kaganov. Images of Space: St. Petersburg in Visual and Verbal Arts. Stanford University Press, 1997.
Paul Keenan. St. Petersburg and the Russia Court. Houndmills, Hampshire, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
Michael Klebanov. “The Culture of Experiment in Russian Theatrical Modernism: The OBERIU Theatre Art and the Biomechanics of Vsevolod Meyerhold” in Russian Avant-Garde and Radical Modernism: An introductory Reader. Ed. Dennis S. Ioffe and Frederick H. White. Academic Studies Press, 2012.
William Bruce Lincoln. Sunlight at Midnight: St. Petersburg and the Rise of Modern Russia. Boulder, CO: Basic Books, 2002.
Nicholas Riasonovsky. “St. Petersburg and Moscow as Cultural Symbols” in Art and Culture in Nineteenth Century Russia. Ed. Theofanis G. Stavron. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983.
Laurence Senelick. “Nikolai Evreinov’s Inspector General”. Performing Arts Journal. Vol. 8 no 1, 1984.
Robert M. Seltzer. Dubnov’s New Judaism: Diaspora, Nationalism and the World History of the Jews. Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2014.
Maria Shevtsova. Dodin and the Maly Drama Theatre: Process to Performance. New York: Routledge. 2004.
Ekaterina Sukhanova. “St. Petersburg and Mental Health: A Literary Viewpoint”, International Journal of Mental Health. Vol. 28, no 4 (1999-2000).
Richard Taruskin, Defining Russia Musically: Historical and Hermeneutical Essays. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 2nd. Ed. 2001.
Max Weber. The City, translated and edited by Don Martindal. London: Heinemann, 1960.
Petersburg / Petersburg: Novel and City, 1900-1921. Ed. Olga Matich. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2010.
Course/Module evaluation:
End of year written/oral examination 0 %
Presentation 0 %
Participation in Tutorials 10 %
Project work 70 %
Assignments 0 %
Reports 20 %
Research project 0 %
Quizzes 0 %
Other 0 %
Additional information:
The course includes a seven day field trip to Saint Petersburg.
Number of students accepted to the seminar is limited; acceptance on the basis of excellence.
The course is open to senior undergraduate students in the honors program.
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