These are the Special Subject options available in 2026-27. These are indicative of the course offerings for the sub-faculty, so applicants should note that not all options will run in all years, and some course content might change. 

 

The Gulag and the Russian Literary Process (Michaelmas Term)
Convenor: Prof. Polly Jones

This course examines 20th and 21st century Russian and Russophone literature about the Soviet labour camps (Gulag), placing this century-long engagement with the theme within the traditions of older Russian prison narratives, and comparing it with Holocaust fiction where appropriate. It considers the shifting artistic, political and ethical stakes of representing the Gulag, and these texts’ role in Soviet and post-Soviet memory politics. Some background reading on the history of the Gulag and on dissidence and samizdat will be helpful, and theoretical readings on memory, post-memory and trauma will be a core part of the paper. Students will also be encouraged to engage with the numerous film and TV adaptations of Gulag literature from the 1990s to the present.

Texts and authors that could be covered, after consultation with students, include: foundational 19th-century texts about incarceration (Dostoevskii, Chekhov); early Stalin-era depictions before the theme became taboo (the Belomorkanal project; Pogodin); published and samizdat/tamizdat Gulag prose by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Ivan Denisovich, V kruge pervom, Arkhipelag Gulag); the samizdat and tamizdat prison narratives of Vasilii Grossman (Vse techet; Zhizn’ i sud’ba) and Varlam Shalamov (Kolymskie rasskazy); perpetrator fiction by Giorgii Vladimov (Vernyi Ruslan) and Sergei Dovlatov (Zona); post-memory fiction by relatives of prisoners (Bulat Okudzhava, Vasilii Aksenov); and the 21st-century reinvention of Gulag prose by authors including Guzel’ Yakhina, Evgenii Vodolazkin, Zakhar Prilepin and Sergei Lebedev.

 

The Russian Experience of Modernity 1905-45 (Michaelmas Term)
Convenor: Prof. Philip Bullock

The experience of modernity in this period, encompassing as it does revolutions and civil war, two world wars, the establishing of a new society and its subsequent repression, required a radical shift in artistic perceptions and cultural sensibilities. This course will consider the nature of writers’ responses to social rupture, the disparate approaches elicited by an evolving political and philosophical discourse and by the rapidly changing relationships between individuals, and between the state and the individual. From the last years of the Silver Age to the imposition of Socialist Realism, literature, whether in formal poetic ‘schools’, loose associations of prose writers, or in the work of individuals, reflected a conscious search for new forms and found expression in experimental writing over all genres. A wide-ranging, thematic approach will be adopted to the study of the period, allowing students to build on their previous studies whilst exploring new authors. Depending on students’ academic background, it may also be possible to consider literature’s dialogue with the other arts in the period (music, cinema, theatre, the visual arts), and the relationship between Western theories of modernism and the avant-garde and the Russian/Soviet context will be critically interrogated.

 

The Russian Enlightenment: An Idea and its Contexts (Michaelmas Term)
Convenor: Prof. Andrew Kahn

This course aims to study the development of a new set of conceptual vocabularies that characterize the growth of secular political, philosophical, and literary works in the period. By applying methods from the history of ideas, literary analysis, and areas such as the medical humanities, the topics consider how a huge expansion of translation, writing, and publication provided educated Russians with new ways to think about human identity in relation to society, political economy, reason and feeling, the law and absolutism. The syllabus will be drawn from a wide range of authors and genres and disciplines including history, jurisprudence, poetry, and the essay. Topics may include: the growth of the public and private spheres; the history of translation and translation theory; the comparative aspect of the Russian enlightenment; the relation of experimental science to notions of reason and happiness; the meaning and importance of virtue; individual identity and the rise of notions of the self in biography and diary writing.

 

Rise of the Russian Novel (Hilary Term)
Convenor: Dr. Margarita Vaysman

The nineteenth-century novel remains one of Russian literature’s most significant cultural exports. This course examines the novelistic tradition as it unfolded throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and asks uncomfortable questions: How did Russian imperial ideology underpin the development of this form of writing? Why have Russian women writers disappeared from popular histories of the genre? What is the Russian novel’s complicated legacy and how do we approach it today?

We will study the novel’s early history, reading authors like Matvei Chulkov and Fedor Emin, who were working to adapt this foreign form to describe native reality. We will then move on to the Romantic period, focusing on authors like Aleksandr Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov and Karolina Pavlova, to discuss the novel as a hybrid, experimental form. Finally, we will look at the “big baggy monsters” of Russian realism – the works of Ivan Turgenev, Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaia, Ivan Goncharov, and Lev Tolstoi – to examine the differences between the critical tradition of reading the Russian novel and the historical practice of writing one.

The students will read major Russophone novels, analyse them in comparative global contexts and learn to apply the latest critical approaches to canonical texts. The course may also be tailored to accommodate students’ interests, allowing them a choice of novels to read.

 

Gender and Representation in Russian Culture from 1800 (Hilary Term) 
Convenor: TBC (questions relating to this course should be directed to Prof. Philip Bullock)

Since the 1980s, study of gender and identity has been one of the liveliest areas of Russian cultural history. Among particular issues of concern have been the rediscovery of work by forgotten women writers, and discussion of the particular characteristics of this; analysis of ‘the feminine’ as a construct, and of its connections with the representation of national identity (especially in the governing myth of ‘Mother Russia’); study of the representation of sexuality and the development of ‘queer theory’ and LGBTQ+ studies; and examination of the link between normative concepts of gender identity and self-expression in literature and other forms of writing, and also in the visual arts (painting, film, etc.)

Those taking the course may specialise in any one area of women’s writing in its relation to cultural history over a longer time-span (for example, women’s memoirs, 1890-1970); or they may consider several different topics with reference to a specifically denominated historical epoch (for example, women’s writing, representations of sexuality in the visual arts, and concepts of gender identity in the era of Romanticism); or they may wish to examine women’s writing and feminist criticism in dialogue with masculinity studies and queer theory. They are urged to contact the Convenor well in advance of their arrival in Oxford in order to discuss possibilities, and to obtain a list of preliminary reading in gender theory and in Russian cultural history.

 

Late Soviet and Post-Soviet Russian Literature (Hilary Term) 
Convenors: Prof. Polly Jones and Dr. Tamar Koplatadze

This course considers the comparisons and contrasts between late Soviet and post-Soviet culture. The late Soviet literary world was far from 'stagnant', and contained within it many of the literary currents and experimentation that would come out into the open during and after glasnost. Glasnost, perestroika, the abolition of censorship and the disintegration of the USSR brought about fundamental changes in the circumstances of Russian literature. External factors such as political and economic instability, the possibility of travel abroad, changes in the role of literary journals, the collapse of the Union of Writers, Booker and associated prizes, the advent of the computer, have all conditioned authors’ subjects and working methods. Although the legacy of the social command and the habit of writing in opposition died hard, the period has produced much experimental writing, post-modernist or avant-garde in nature, as well as more conventionally realistic works. Previously taboo subjects such as the religious revival and explicit sexuality were frequently treated; questions relating to gender were discussed; events and writing of the Soviet period were revisited, and the need to amend or amplify the historical record was keenly felt. Furthermore, Russophone and non-ethnic Russian writers both in Russia and the former Soviet republics (e.g. Tatarstan, Chechnya, Ukraine, the Caucasus and Central Asia) have brought to the fore (post)colonial questions around national identity, race, centre-periphery, migration, language and the environment. The significantly diminished role of the creative intelligentsia in society, together with an overall lack of direction and coherence, has added to the unpredictability and excitement of the latest literature. For the late Soviet period, possible topics include: poetry and prose of the ‘Thaw’; samizdat (e.g. Erofeev); Gulag prose and poetry (Shalamov, Solzhenitsyn, Grossman, Vladimov); the late Soviet historical novel (Trifonov, Okudzhava, Aitmatov); women’s writing (Baranskaia, Petrushevskaia, Tolstaya). For the post-1991 period, possible topics include Russophone writing (Yakhina, Bibish, Bagirov); (post-)colonialism (Makanin, Sadulaev, Ganieva); gender; dystopia and magical historicism (Sorokin, Pelevin).

 

Czech Poetry since 1817 (Michaelmas Term)
Convenor: Dr Rajendra Chitnis

This option covers the history of modern Czech verse from the National Revival to the present. Depending on students’ previous studies and current interests, the option may take the form of a survey of core texts, or students may choose, in consultation with the convenor, to explore particular genres, time-periods or themes. In recent years, students have studied, for example, Symbolism and the Avant-garde, war poetry, and Czech 'zone' poems.

Please note: Since all texts are studied in the Czech original, students need to have existing reading fluency in Czech.

 

Czech Prose Fiction and Drama since 1774 (Hilary Term) 
Convenor: Dr Rajendra Chitnis

This option covers the rise of modern Czech fiction and drama, from Romanticism and the National Revival, through Realism, Naturalism, Decadence and Symbolism, Modernism, the Avant-garde and Socialism to the present day. Depending on students’ previous studies and current interests, the option may take the form of a survey of core texts from throughout the period, or students may choose, in consultation with the convenor, to focus on particular genres, time-periods or themes. In recent years, students have focused, for example, on Czech women’s writing, folklore and the fantastic in Czech literature, Modernism and literary experiment, and Czech literature since the fall of Communism.

Please note: Since all texts are studied in the Czech original, students need to have existing reading fluency in Czech.