The Literature of Russian and African-American Soul


LTMO 155I, Winter 2010
Tues & Thurs. 6:00-7:45
Baskin Engineering 152

William Nickell
bnickell@ucsc.edu
103 Cowell College
459-4551

Office Hours: M 11:00–1:30 and by appt.



SYLLABUS


Jan. 5-7: Cultures of Soul
Tues. Lecture: Introductions
Thurs. Lecture: Serfs, Slaves and the Humanist Tradition
READ: Radischev – Journey From Petersburg to Moscow (excerpts, sendout)
Petr Chaadaev – First Philosophical Letter (sendout)
 Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (excerpts, sendout)
William Lloyd Garrison, Introduction to Narrative of the Life of
Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (sendout)

Jan. 12 – 14: Identification with the Russian serf
Tues. Lecture Background on Russian Serfdom and Slavery
READ: Ivan Turgenev, Sketches from a Hunter’s Album (pp. 15 – 191)
Thurs. Lecture Turgenev’s Serfs and Russian Humanism
READ: Ivan Turgenev, A Hunter’s Notes (pp. 192 – 390)
VIEW Film: scenes from Eisenstein’s Bezhin Meadow (in class)

Jan. 19 – 21: Servitude and Rectitude
Tues. Lecture: Dostoevsky’s Rebellion and Punishment
READ: Dostoevsky – The House of the Dead (Part I, pp. 7-167)
Thurs. Lecture : The Notion of Redemptive Suffering
READ: Finish House of the Dead (Part II, pp. 172-304)
 Alan Lomax – “Rise Up, Dead Man” from Land Where the Blues Began (sendout)
LISTEN Rise Up, Dead Man

Jan 26 – 28: The Souls of Black Folk
Tues. Lecture: Dubois and His Groundbreaking Book
READ: W.E.B. Du Bois – The Souls of Black Folk (pp. 9-88)
 Also see photographs on pages (pp. 195-213)
Thurs Lecture: Double Consciousness
READ: Du Bois –The Souls of Black Folk (pp. 89-164)
Wallace Thurman, “Harlem Salon” (sendout, 8 pp.)

Feb. 2 – 4: Good Religions
Tues. Lecture: African-American Faiths and Charismatic practices
READ: Eugene Genovese, “The Christian Tradition,” “Black Conversion and White
Sensibility”
 LISTEN: Selected Gospel Music
The Sermons of Rev. J.M. Gates
Thurs. Lecture: Russian Folk Religion – Duel Faith, Old Believers, Sects
READ: Boris Pilnyak - Redwood
LISTEN Selected Orthodox and Old-Believer Hymnody
VIEW Film: Maksim Gorky’s Childhood
 Scenes from Oblomov

Feb. 9 – 11: Soul Music
Tues. Lecture: Russian Folk Lament, Polyphony, Village Song, Stravinsky
READ: Nina Vernadsky – “The Russian Folk Song” (JSTOR)
Tolstoy, “Three Deaths” (sendout)
LISTEN: Selection of Russian Folk Music
VIEW: Film: Dovzhenko - Earth
Thurs. Lecture : Blues, Spirituals, Field Calls
GUEST SPEAKER: Michael Mpyangu
READ: Alan Lomax – “Sinful Songs of the Southern Negro,” “Reels and Work Songs”
LISTEN: Selection of African-American Folk Music

Feb 16 – 18: Cultural Anthropology of the Soul
Tues. Lecture: Collecting African-American folklore
READ: Zora Neal Hurston – Mules and Men: “Folk Tales” (pp. 7-179)
Thurs. Lecture : Folk beliefs and African traditions
READ: Hurston – Mules and Men: “Hoodoo” (pp. 183-249 and browse the appendices)
 Handout on Russian folk belief

Feb 23 – 25: Crossing Over
Tues. Lecture: The Russian National Poet as African
READ: Aleksander Pushkin – “The Moor of Peter the Great” (sendout)
Langston Hughes – “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” (sendout, 28 pp.)
James Weldon Johnson – Preface to The Book of American Negro Poetry (sendout, 22 pp.)
Claude McKay – Selected Poetry (handout, 5 pp.)
Thurs. Lecture The Russian Robeson
READ: Paul Robeson – Selected writings on Music and Soviet Russia (sendout)
From Yelena Khanga - Soul to Soul: A Black Russian American
Family 1865-1992 (excerpts)
VIEW: Film: Circus

Mar 2 – 4: Soul and Civilization in Soviet Modernity
Tues. Lecture: Soviet Asia and the contexts of Platonov’s Soul (Dzhan)
READ: Andrei Platonov – Soul (1-87)
Alexander Crummell – “Civilization, the Primal Need of the Race” (in DuBois,
172-176)
Thurs. Lecture: Saving souls as an existential problem
READ: Soul (pp. 87-149)
James Baldwin, “Stranger in the Village” (sendout)

Mar 9 – 11: Cultural Ecology of the Soul
Tues. Lecture: Civilization versus the village
READ: Aleksander Solzhenitsyn – “Matryona’s Home,” “Zakhar’s Pouch” (sendout)
DuBois – “The Conservation of Races” (DuBois, pp.176-183)
VIEW: Film: Farewell Matyora (Valentin Rasputin)
Thurs. Lecture: Open Day





Required texts (available at Bay Tree Bookstore):

W.E.B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk (Norton, ISBN#:  0-393-97393-X)
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The House of the Dead and Poor Folk (Barnes & Noble, ISBN#: 1593081944)
Ivan Turgenev, Sketches from a Hunter's Album (Penguin, ISBN#: 0140445226)
Andrei Platonov, Soul (Harvill Press, ISBN#: 184343038X)
Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men (Harper, ISBN#:  0060916486)

Selected readings provided electronically


Assignments:


1) A midterm paper of 6-8 pages.
2) A final paper of 8-10 pages.

The midterm is due at the beginning of class on Feb. 9th. Final papers are due Thursday, March 18 at 4:00 in my office. Papers and exams should be typed and double-spaced. Please be sure that your paper is stapled and that the pages are numbered, and make an extra copy for yourself.


Evaluation:

The writing assignments account for approximately 80% of your grade, with the remaining 20% based on attendance, participation and the discussion facilitation. Attendance in class and in the discussion sections is mandatory. You may miss one section; thereafter absences will affect your grade, and missing more than two may be grounds for failure.