Honors Projects

Theory of Prosaics in Literature and History: Leo Tolstoy and Lion Feuchtwanger

Angelica Ushatova '94 — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:29:53 PDT

In this paper, I intend to explore the theory of prosaics, which offers a quite different approach to life and historical events in particular. This theory was introduced;by the American scholar Gary Saul Morson. Morson coined the term prosaics in order to describe a concept that permeates the work of Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975), a Russian literary critic and philosopher. The most important concepts developed by Bakhtin are prosaics (Morson's and Emerson's term), unfinalizability, and dialogue. Bakhtin created also various theories: a comprehensive theory of literature that privileges prose and the novel, theories of languages, and of literary genres. Bakhtin was first rediscovered in the Soviet Union and the West in the 1960s and 1970s. Morson's and Emerson's work on Bakhtin's philosophy definitly contributed to the understanding of this original thinker.

Writing Russian Women's Lives: Exploring the "Unwritten" Autobiographies of Karolina Pavlova and Olga Berrgoltts

Kristen Bleakley '95 — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:29:52 PDT

In the Soviet Union we see yet another aspect of society which severely restricted the introspection of the individual. This particular suppression was not gender based, however. Rather, it was based on the gender-indifferent ideology of socialism and the belief that the wants, needs, and desires of the individual must be subordinated to the best interests of society as a whole. The Soviet Party sought to incorporate a mass consciousness in a Utopian setting. This they hoped to accomplish by controlling the thoughts and ideas of the entire nation, making spiritual property public just as they had done with material property.

Vse Luchshe Detiam: All the Best to the Children, Soviet Ideology in Children's Fairy Tale Cartoons

Matthew Boyd '00 — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:39:32 PDT

I have chosen as a focus the analysis of fairy tale cartoons in the Soviet Union and have attempted to establish the specific ideological use of five films spanning 1947-1979. For the analysis of these cartoons as ideological tools I have established a theoretical apparatus. This apparatus is based upon a thorough definition of ideology as it applies to these films taken from Terry Eagleton's book Ideology. I have adopted Vladimir Propp's theoretical apparatus on the classification of fairytales from his book Morphology of the Folktale. To aid both in interpreting the history of the 1920s to 1970s Soviet Union and in interpreting the ideological meaning behind the cartoons being analyzed, I have adopted the binary model of Russian history of Lotman and Uspenskii. To provide context for the development of the ideologies being expressed in these films, I have researched an extensive history of the period as it applies to the development of art.

Imaginative Geography, and the Perspective of the Other in Russian Literature

Joshua Wansley '01 — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:39:30 PDT

In 1839, the Prince Odoevsky wrote a piece of fantasy, entitled The Year 4338. It was a surrealist forecast of a distant future, and was narrated by the "voiceless one," who purports to be a Chinese student writing from Russia. The world has been divided chiefly between Russia and China in the year 4338. The English have long diminished in strength, and the Americans have auctioned their cities "on the public market," in fact the latter are the only benign menace in this utopian future. Love of humanity is so prevalent that all misfortune has been removed from even literature. In short, while China trails behind as an inferior world countetpart, Russia is the hegemonic idyllic nation in the world; indeed, Russia has become the world. Odoevsky is unabashed in his presentation of a perfect world under the auspices of Russia, hence, accordingly, the nationalist sci-fi work was quite popular in its time. It satisfied the longing of many fanciful Russian imaginations, and assuaged their inadequacies about the position of Russia in the present, as well as the future. Nationalism is an unfortunate aspect of many countries, yet for Russia, its presence has historically been particularly salient. It was as if the West needed spiritual resurrection, and only Russia could deliver this consecrated utopia. The Russian empire contained the "Third Rome," Moscow, and was therefore the only legitimate home of Christianity. Messianic rhetoric aside, nationalism, as has been the case for other countries as well, is a product of inadequacies and fear; ultimately, a drive for the subordination of the "other."

Advertisements: Mirrors of the Soul The Reflections of Current Social Change in Russian Advertising.

Laurel Nolen '94 — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:39:30 PDT

The function of an advertisement is to make the advertised product (or service) appealing to an audience; the larger the audience, the less specific the ad must be in its appeal. An advertisement can be a very clear indicator of the societal values and norms of its country of origin -a sort of "mirror of the soul" of the nation that produced it. There are many cultural references that are made, consciously or unconsciously, through which others may gain insight into the workings of a particular society or culture.

The Duality of Soviet Culture: Manufactured and Organic Cultures

Mark Thomas Fletcher '95 — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:39:29 PDT

In place of what actually existed -a still industrializing country with very many workers living in privation, a peasantry in a new enserfment, a huge caste of slave laborers in concentration camps, a priviledged service nobility living in relative luxury minus security of tenure, a similarly insecure court circle at the top functioning at the pleasure of a new tsar-autocrat, a heavily terrorized society honeycombed with police informers, in which an overheard careless word or anecdote was a potential ticket to hell -Stalinist culture depicted a democratic Soviet Russia whose nonantagonistic classes of workers and peasants and intelligentsia "stratum" lived in amity, a socialist Russia moving toward the further stage of full communism under an adored Stalin's leadership.