Visual Culture II (P01328)

? Credit Points : 20 ? SCQF Level : 11 ? Acronym : LLC-P-P01328

The course investigates the notion of the East - loaded geopolitical, ideological, aesthetic, and highly symbolic concept - in the context of the eastern edges, margins and centres of Europe. The course is organized around a number of historical tropes which underpin the conflicted contemporary identities of the East of Europe: the Russian Empire, the Bolshevik Revolution, the WWII, Communism, and Post-Communism. By way of exploring the spaces and images, urban sites and filmic representations, the course focuses on the fluid borders of the East (linguistic, national, idealogical, material and imaginary), its shifting centres (Moscow, St Petersburg, Vienna, Paris and Berlin), and its complex identities and allegiances (ethnic, linguistic, aesthetic, and religious).

Key issues discussed in the course include: The East-West dichotomy; assumptions associated with the Occidental and the Oriental and the invisibility of the immediate European East; the questions of the intellectual, cultural and geographic centrality of Europe; western'rationality' versus Eastern 'mysticism'; problems of identity and allegiance, such as patriotism, nostalgia, sacrifice and struggle; imaginary and mythical centres for Eastern Europeans; the weight of history and ideology in performing the notion of the East; issues of individual and collected memories constructed internally (by Eastern Europeans and externally (by the West).

The course offers a conceptual framework for thinking about the multiplicity of the (contested) East(s) in relations to the (stable) West and in reference to the individual, national, cultural, ethnic, and religious constructs and representations.

Entry Requirements

none

Subject Areas

Home subject area

Common Courses (School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures), (School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures, Schedule G)

Delivery Information

? Normal year taken : Postgraduate

? Delivery Period : Semester 2 (Blocks 3-4)

? Contact Teaching Time : 2 hour(s) per week for 10 weeks

All of the following classes

Type	Day	Start	End	Area
Lecture	Thursday	14:00	15:50	Central

Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes

Students will develop a new critical perspective regarding the concept of the East as positioned within the contemporay theoretical debates in cultural studies. They will gain theoretical and conceptual tools for dealing with the contemporary cultural representations of Eastern Europe and Russia in relation to larger themes of history, memory and identity.