CMPL 225 - The Existentialist Imagination in Russia and Europe

FC ARHU CD

4 credits
Responding to the major crises and anxieties of modernity, particularly the decline of religion and the rise of metaphysical skepticism, existentialism invites us to explore such themes as consciousness, death, the absurd, freedom, and responsibility. This course will examine the origins of the existentialist worldview in 19th and early 20th-century Russian literature (Dostoevsky, Tolstoy); discuss the classical texts of European existentialists (Kafka, Unamuno, Camus, Sartre, de Beauvoir) and look at the existentialist legacy in 20th and 21st-century Russian literature and film (Tarkovsky, Shalamov, Petrushevskaya, Litvinova). Readings, film subtitles, and discussion in English.
This course is cross-listed with RUSS 225