Spring 2015 course: Post-Soviet Life

Spring 2015 course: Post-Soviet Life

Post-Soviet Life
Spring 2015
RUSS 354 / SOCI 395 / SOCI 633
Professor Bockman
Tuesdays 1:30-4:15pm

Sociology professor Johanna Bockman is teaching "Post-Soviet Life" this Spring 2015. In this course, we will explore the “fall of communism” and how the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe have transformed since 1989. What exactly happened in the late 1980s and specifically in 1989? Why did the Soviet Union end?

We then turn to the ways that people have sought to survive and create new cultural and political practices within the market relations and commodification in the post-socialist era. We will explore a wide range of topics, including oligarchs, commodification, art, music, criminality, nationalism, violence, workers, gender, the self, religion, public health, and the environment.

Finally, how do people remember the socialist past? How are they reestablishing relations with the Soviet past to envision their future?