Science and Revolution

Can society be revolutionized by science? Can human experience be reduced to scientific laws? In this course we study literature, film, and poetry of revolutionary Russia and the radical legacy that led up to it. Topics and themes may include materialism/physicalism, idealism, serfdom and emancipation, utopias and dystopias, political concepts (authority, nationalism, populism, terrorism). Writers artists and filmmakers may include: Turgenev, Chernyshevsky, Pisarev, Chekhov, Zamyatin, Mayakovsky, Bulgakov, Platonov, Shklovsky, Eisenstein, Malevich, Kandinsky