Department of English

In 1989-1991, a whole world, perhaps many worlds, vanished: worlds of socialism. In this course we will investigate key works of literature and film spanning the socialist world(s), focused around the USSR, which was for many the (not uncontested) center of the socialist cosmos for much of the twentieth century. Further, we will study the cultural and political interrelationships between the socialist world(s) and anticolonial and left movements in the developing and the capitalist developed nations alike. Finally, we will investigate the aftermaths left behind as these world(s) crumbled or were transformed beyond recognition at the end of the twentieth century. Our work will be ramified by consideration of a number of critical and methodological tools for the study of these many histories and geographies. The purview of the course is dauntingly large—global in scale—and therefore “coverage” will of necessity be incomplete. Readings and viewings include:

Dziga Vertov, Man With a Movie Camera, 67 mins., 1929.

Sergei Eisenstein, The Battleship Potemkin, 66 mins., 1925.

Valentin Kataev, Time, Forward!

Brecht, The Measure Taken. 

Lu Xun, “The True Story of Ah Q.” 

George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia.

Langston Hughes, selection of poetry.

Anna Seghers, The Seventh Cross.

Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Jihan El-Tahri, Cuba an African Odyssey, 190 min., 2007.

Mikhail Kalatozov, Soy Cuba, 135 min., 1964. 

Ousmane Sembène, Xala, 123 mim., 1975.

Ousmane Sembène, God’s Bits of Wood (1960) (Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1962).

Sarah Maldoror, Sambizanga, 97 min., 1972.

Sergei Soloviev, Assa, 145 min., 1987.

Jasmina Wojcik, Symphony of the Ursus Factory, 60 mins. 2018.