Summer 2024 Course Offerings
Summer Term I
RUSS380J: SOVIET UNION DURING WWII (CRN 16231)
This course explores what was arguably the most important decade of the Soviet era: the years between 1938 and 1948. During this time, the Soviet Union was transformed from being a power of only regional significance into one of the two postwar “superpowers.” The USSR underwent Stalin’s purges, the Nazi-Soviet Pact, and the crises leading up to the Nazi invasion of June 22, 1941. In the war itself, the Soviets suffered some 27 million dead, and their economy was laid waste. Yet from that war the USSR emerged with enhanced power, gaining great swathes of territory and a belt of subject Communist satellite states in Eastern Europe. It also became a nuclear power. The events of this crucial decade, in short, forged the shape of the postwar world, a shape that would last until 1989.
Instructor: Amanda Ward (amward@binghamton.edu)
General Education Designations: N, C, I, T
Dates: 5/28/2024 to 07/01/2024
HIST386D: WORLD WAR II REFUGEES
The course introduces students to short-term and long-term historical processes which paved the way for the Second World War and the massive refugee crisis afterwards. According to the UNRRA estimates, in 1945 there were over 15 million refugees and displaced persons in Europe alone. Focusing on different geographies in Europe and the Soviet Union, this class focuses on the processes of repatriation, evacuation, and displacement of millions of people. By examining various primary sources, students will be able to learn and evaluate activities and efforts of state actors and international organizations to solve the refugee crisis, especially in Europe and the agency of displaced persons in the process of finding a new home. Through weekly assigned 2 primary sources, students will learn how to identify, evaluate, and critically analyze evidence to make historical arguments. In addition, the coursework will require students to develop writing skills through a series of writing assignments.
Instructor: Zeynep Dursun (zdursun1@binghamton.edu)
General Education Designations: D, I, N, T, W
HIST384A: THE NEW SILK ROAD
This course examines social, economic, and cultural change in Central Asia from the 18th century to the early 21st century. Despite the rise of maritime trade, Central Asia retained its importance in trade across Asia. As a borderland, it became a competitive space for different empires, particularly the British, Russian, and Chinese empires. Through this course, students will come to better understand how this ancient trade route changed in the modern era, and how these changes mediated imperial competition, patterns of cultural exchange within Eurasia and between Asia and Europe, and the formation of new states (including both nation-states and multi-ethnic entities). The course will also provide context for understanding China’s “One belt One Road” initiative, this inland trade route in the region--a reminder that the Silk Road and its patterns of trade and exchange remain with us today.
Instructor: Aiduosi Amantai (aamanta1@binghamton.edu)
General Education Designations: I, N, T, W
Summer Term II
RUSS380L: RED WESTERNS: COWBOYS & CROOKS ON SOVIET SCREENS
This course examines the genre of the Western as it manifests in films from the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. The title of the course invokes the concept of the “Red Western,” a mode of Soviet cinema which appropriates, parodies, and subverts the tropes of Hollywood Westerns, including the gun-slinging cowboy, the indigenous Other, and the coarse landscapes of the supposedly untamed frontier. The professed goal of the Red Western, produced in countries across Eastern Europe during the Cold War era, is usually a biting critique of American capitalism and imperialism, enacted weekly through the formal devices of the Western itself. Red Westerns make rich objects of analysis, posing questions about the possibilities and limits of particular forms and genres, while also illuminating social, political, economic tensions between the Soviet “East” and the American “West.”
Instructor: Samantha Sharp (ssharp1@binghamton.edu)
General Education Designations: G, H, J
Dates: 7/08/2024 to 8/09/2024
HIST381J: SPORT IN MODERN EAST CENTRAL EUROPEAN HISTORY
This course explores how sports activities and organizations contributed to cultural change, the rise and articulation of modern national identities, and related political confrontations and upheavals. Starting with the Sokol Movement in Prague in the early 19th century, the course will trace the interplay between sports and nationalism to the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990’s. Students will learn about state creation, nationalism, and violence in Eastern Europe through the lens of sport by covering topics such as the rise of sporting organizations and national identity, how sport was used and what it symbolized in WWII and the Cold War, and what sports can tell us about post-communism in Eastern Europe today. The course will consist of five modules concluding with written assessments and weekly discussion board posts centered on readings, podcasts, and films. Students will leave the course with a better understanding about how sport can help explain nationalism, violence, and identity in Eastern Europe
Instructor: David Kaminsky (dkamins3@binghamton.edu)
General Education Designations: I, N, T, C
HIST381T: SCIENCE, POLITICS, AND IDEOLOGY IN THE COLD WAR
This course will cover the development of natural and social sciences in the Soviet Union, primarily during the Cold War. It will focus in particular on the interplay between domestic politics, foreign policy, ideology and the agency of scientists in shaping Soviet science. The course will also investigate the intricacies of Soviet science exchange with the United States, as well as Soviet changing perceptions of modernity and international relations. The topics covered will include: the role of ethnographic knowledge in Soviet spatial and demographic imagination, the rise and fall of Soviet genetics, the nuclear arms race and a space race, the relations between Soviet and U.S. social scientists.
Instructor: Iana Shchetinskaia (ishchet1@binghamton.edu)
General Education Designations: I, N, T, G, W
RUSS380L: RED WESTERNS: COWBOYS & CROOKS ON SOVIET SCREENS
This course examines the genre of the Western as it manifests in films from the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. The title of the course invokes the concept of the “Red Western,” a mode of Soviet cinema which appropriates, parodies, and subverts the tropes of Hollywood Westerns, including the gun-slinging cowboy, the indigenous Other, and the coarse landscapes of the supposedly untamed frontier. The professed goal of the Red Western, produced in countries across Eastern Europe during the Cold War era, is usually a biting critique of American capitalism and imperialism, enacted weekly through the formal devices of the Western itself. Red Westerns make rich objects of analysis, posing questions about the possibilities and limits of particular forms and genres, while also illuminating social, political, economic tensions between the Soviet “East” and the American “West.”
Instructor: Samantha Sharp (ssharp1@binghamton.edu)
General Education Designations: G, H, J
