19th century Russian cultural production
We are all quite aware that culture does not only happen when Tolstoy picks up a pen, or Tchaikovsky sits down at a piano. Yet still, we often know a great deal more about these moments than we do about the everyday cultural context that informs them, including fundamental changes in the way people read, listen, speak, and experience art and culture more generally.
This course attempts to view culture not by its canonical works, genres, styles, and artists, but rather by its “economy,” or modes and sites of production and consumption. More specifically, we will ask the following questions: How does Russian culture function as a system in the 19th century, and what economic, technological, social and aesthetic values affect its operation? How are cultural economies shaped, and how are values assigned to cultural products? What are the means of production of culture?
Our theoretical approach will be something of a hybrid, part cultural history and part sociology of culture: we will a) examine a series of cultural institutions and practices, and b) consider how they operate within “the field of cultural production” (in Bourdieu’s terms, though we will not always use them the same way he does). In keeping with these two approaches, each week we will work with both a zoom and fish-eye lens, looking closely at one object, but then contextualizing it in a larger field.
Another goal here is to refresh our notion of 19th century Russian culture—to enjoy its richness and diversity. Finally, even if you don’t work on Russia or the 19th century, the course will provide a model for thinking systemically about culture in other contexts as well.
Week 1: Enlightenment Culture and its Institutions
The 18th century heritage, with particular attention to the borrowing of Enlightenment models from Western Europe (especially France). Codes and modes of appropriation. Enlightenment personae in Russia (Lomonosov, Catherine, Radischev). The rise of secular educational institutions (with attention to particulars such as Smolny and the Lyceum, but also to the gymnasium and university). Enlightenment and revolution. European contexts.
Texts
Donald Sassoon – from The Culture of the Europeans (“Sources of Cultural Expansion,” “Triumphant Languages”)
Catherine II: Correspondence with Voltaire, Levshina; commentary on Radishchev’s Journey; selctions from Vsiakoe vsiachestvo (Odds and Ends)
Ekaterina Dashkova – “Epistle on the Word ‘So’”
Letters of Speranskii, Tatischev, et. al. on education
Alexander Radishchev – from Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow
Nikolai Karamzin – “On the Book Trade and Love of Reading in Russia,” “Why Is There So Little Writing Talent in Russia?”
Week 2: Domestic Production
How does culture operate in the home? Practices (salons, balls, readings and musical performance) and the genres they shape (occasional poetry, epigrams, album inscriptions and drawings, courtship in the ballroom, by the piano, in the drawing room and in the gazebo). We will pay special attention to the tradition of recitation of both poetry and prose, considering how it might shape the development of Russian literature.
Texts
Richard Stites – “The Domestic Muse” (from Serfdom, Society and the Arts in Imperial Russia)
Lina Bernstein, “Women on the Verge of a New Language: Russian Literary Salons and their Hostesses in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century” (from Russia*Women*Culture).
Юрий Лотман, «Бал», «Беседа», «Карточная игра» (Беседы о русской культуре)
Reading aloud: audio texts from Gogol, Dal’, Tolstoy, Tiutchev
Week 3: Performativity (Theatre and “Theatre”)
We will look closely at serf theatre, but we will also examine other settings, including court and public theatre, as well as home “theatricals.” Other topics include the “star system,” the Russian school of acting (how might it set the stage for the great innovators who come in the 20th century?), practices of theatre-going and spectatorship (including consideration of the anthropology of spectacle). (Also possible here: courtrooms and trials)
Texts:
Stites, Part III: Empire of Performance (from Serfdom, Society and the Arts in Imperial Russia)
Юрий Лотман, «Театр и театральность в строе культуры начала ХIX века»
Patricia Roosevelt – “Emerald Thrones & Living Statues: Theater & Theatricality on the Estate”
Louise McReynolds – “The Origins of Russia’s Legitimate Stage” (from Russia at Play)
Laurence Senelick – “The Erotic Bondage of Serf Theatre”
Catherien Schuler – “Theatre, Performance and Identity in Imperial Russia: Ambitious Emperors and Cultural Colonialism”
From The History of Russian Theatre: Briggs, “Writers & Repertoire,” Altschuller, “Actors and Acting, 1820-1850,” Kelly, “Popular, Provincial & Amateur Theatres, 1820-1900”
Week 4: The Public Sphere and Cultural Production
Theory week! Two classic texts (I will tell you which sections to focus on) and their application to the Russian context. How does the development of the public sphere in 19th century Russia relate to the cultural institutions that shape it? What forms of authority are vested in culture? How is meaning
Texts:
Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production
Week 5: Circulation & Circumvention
How do words become discourse in Russia? Practices of censorship and publication. Who runs the presses? Who are the censors? (Goncharov, Tyutchev, and Nikitenko). The changing face of Russian literacy. Ways of working around systems of control ranging from the private (correspondence, conversation (esp. during travel), to the social (intellectual circles and salons), to the public (such as subversive gestures, commemorative practices at public funerals, etc.). We will look closely at the Petrashevsky circle’s marvelous Pocket Dictionary of Foreign Words, which was used as a way of introducing problematic foreign ideas into public discourse. We will also consider movement and the creation of social margins, particularly in the south and Far East.
Texts:
Donald Fanger, “Gogol and His Reader”
Jeffrey Brooks, from When Russia Learned to Read
Marianna Choldin, “Poet Censors: the Tiutchev Years,” “Applying the ‘Caviar’: Defending Country, Religion and Morals” (from A Fence Around the Empire)
Nikitenko, A. V. from Dnevnik, vols. 1–3. Moscow, 1955–56.
Michel de Certeau “Making Do: Uses and Tactics” (from The Practice of Everyday Life)
Close reading: Карманный словарь иностранных слов
Week 6: Cultural Authority: Critics and Journals
The thick journal and its readers. Political and social affiliations. The Russian school of criticism. The role of the critic as voice of public values. Belinsky and the creation of a national interpretive machine. The miscellaneous content of the thick journal. Publication of foreign material in translation. Contiguity studies.
Texts:
Selections from Martinson, Literary Journals in Imperial Russia (probably William Mills Todd III “Periodicals in literary life of the early nineteenth century,” Robert Belknap, “Survey of Russian journals, 1840-1880”)
Close reading: issues of Современник, Дневник писателя
Week 7: Free Art - in the Village, Museum, Pulpit and Public Square
In the early 20th century Russian modernists like Stravinsky and Prokofiev very openly mined their heritage of popular culture. But this exchange was actually going on throughout the 19th century. We will look at the interplay between “high” and “low” culture, but with greater attention to the popular elements: Gypsy music, the balagan, the lubok, tavern music, and popular hagiography. Art that is performed for free (often, but not always, folk art) vs. emerging markets.
Texts:
Catriona Kelly, “Petrushka and the Fairground” (from Petrushka: the Russian Carnival Puppet Theatre)
Лотман, “Кукли в системе культуры”
Franz Liszt, from The Gipsy in Music
Gypsy romances and Russian folk songs
Lubok images
Orthodox sermons, hymns, icons, rituals
Week 8: Cultural Enterprise - Patronage, Publishing, Art Markets
The development of a Russian art economy, including schools, museums, galleries, patronage. Problems of representation (censorship, but also public taste), scandals, public demonstrations related to (and situated in front of) paintings. Collection practices, both public and private. Portraiture. Busts. Public statues and monuments.
Stites, IV: Pictures at an Exhibition (from Serfdom, Society and the Arts in Imperial Russia)
Rosalind Blakesley, Art, Nationhood, and Display: Zinaida Volkonskaia and Russia's Quest for a National Museum of Art
Alexey Makhrov, “The Pioneers of Russian Art Criticism: Between State and Public Opinion, 1804-1855”
Louise McReynolds, “The Newspaper in Battle With the Thick Journal: Commercialization and Objectivity in the 1880s” (97-123)
Week 9: Cultural Charisma
The veneration of religious, literary, musical, theatrical, legal, medical, and other “masters,” as well as to various objects and their cults. When does culture become sacramental? As we have heretofore paid little attention to religious culture, this week we will look closely at the veneration of saints and icons (and especially Ioann of Kronshtadt, a fascinating pop поп at the end of the century).
Texts:
Nadieszda Kizenko, “Letters as Examples of Religious Mentalities,” “Contemporary Representations and Their Role in Spreading Saintly Celebrity” (from A Prodigal Saint: Father John of Kronstadt and the Russian People)
Alexandre Dumas, from Celebrated Crimes of the Russian Court
Nickell (maybe)
Week 10: At the Turn of the Century: Revolutions in Technology & Culture
A big question throughout the quarter will be the role of technology in changing the cultural landscape. At the end of the century things really take off. New printing technologies allow the mechanical reproduction of art and photographs, and change the content and readership of periodicals. A wave of new inventions comes from abroad: the telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, the Dictaphone, the cinema, The rise of populist/popular publication, including the penny press and the paperback.
Texts:
One day in the pages of Novoe Vremia, Gazeta Kopeika, Rech’, Kolokol
Tolstoy – “I Cannot Remain Silent” in New York Times
Kovalova & Tsivian, from Кинематограф в Петербурге 1896-1917 : кинотеатры и зрители
“Early Cinema Architecture and the Evolution of the Social Composition of Cinema”
Louise McReynolds – “Steppin’ Out in the Russian Night at the Fin de Siecle” (from Russia at Play)
Selected photographs, postcards, and greeting cards
Early Russian illustrated journals