C9914 - CULTURA E SOCIETÀ DEI PAESI DI LINGUA RUSSA

Learning outcomes

Upon completion of the course, the student will possess a foundational knowledge of the culture and civilisation of Russian-speaking countries and will be able to independently develop further knowledge as well as analytical and cultural competencies pertaining to the societies of these countries.

Course contents

The course Culture and Civilisation of Russian-Speaking Countries aims to provide foundational knowledge on the geography, history, culture, and society of the Russian Federation, as well as some basic notions on neighbouring countries, from the perspective of cultural history and the history of mentalities.

The information provided will be organised according to the following thematic categories:

• Geography: cities, regions, territorial administration; seas, mountains, forests, deserts, rivers, lakes, and climatic zones.

• History: the formation of the Rus' state; the Christianisation of Rus'; the history of the Tatar-Mongol yoke; Ivan the Terrible; the colonisation of Siberia; serfdom; the reign of the Romanovs; the Russian Empire; the Bolshevik Revolution and the Soviet Empire; perestroika; El'tsin's Russia; Putin's Russia.

• Language and literature: Russian and Church Slavonic: usages and contexts; The Tale of Igor's Campaign and Old Russian literature; eighteenth-century literature (Mikhail Lomonosov, Gavriil Derzhavin).

• Architecture: the major monuments and museums of Moscow and St Petersburg.

• Theatre and music: Russian ballet; the great composers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

• Religion, traditions, and customs: the principles of Orthodox doctrine; religious architecture and painting; the main religious festivals; the relationship between State and Church in both ancient and modern Russia.

Russian history, geography, and culture will be examined through the lens of cultural history and the history of mentalities. Without dwelling excessively on each thematic category—which students may subsequently explore independently or in other courses, such as the course on Russian literature—the course will offer a general overview of the country's historical and cultural specificities. The aim is to provide students with the necessary analytical tools to examine the cultural, historical, political, geographical, and intellectual contexts of the texts that will be addressed during the classes in Interpretation and Translation to and from Russian.

Readings/Bibliography

• Suggested readings:

• • Roger Bartlett, Storia della Russia, Milano, Mondadori, 2007
  • Marcello Garzaniti, Gli slavi. Storia, culture e lingue dalle origini ai nostri giorni, Roma, Carocci, 2019
  • Boris Uspenskij, Storia della lingua letteraria russa. Dall'antica Rus' a Puškin. Bologna, Il Mulino, 1993
  • Michele Colucci e Riccardo Picchio, Storia della civiltà letteraria russa. Volumi primo e secondo, Torino, UTET, 1997
  • Storia della letteratura russa / diretta da Efim Etkind ... [et al.]. - Torino : Einaudi. - 4 v.
  • Gian Piero Piretto, Da Pietroburgo a Mosca: le due capitali in Dostoevskij, Belyj, Bulgakov, Milano, Guerini, 1990
  • Gian Piero Piretto, Quando c'era l'URSS: 70 anni di storia culturale Sovietica, Milano, Raffaello Cortina, 2018
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• Supplementary reading materials:
• • Jurij Lotman, Conversazioni sulla cultura russa, Milano, Bompiani, 2019
  • Jurij Tynjanov, Il giovane Puškin, Medhelan, 2026
  • Anna Giust, Petr Il'ič Čajkovskij, Curci, 2023
  • Gian Piero Piretto, Il paese di Putin: 20 parole russe al servizio della propaganda, Milano, Raffaello Cortina, 2026
  
  

Teaching methods

The course will be conducted entirely in Italian. Students will nevertheless be provided with short glossaries containing the essential Russian terms and names for each lesson.

Twenty lectures will be delivered (totalling 40 hours). Each lesson will comprise a historical-theoretical component and a brief practical segment, which will review the contents of the previous session and require a more active involvement on the part of students (e.g., dialogue with the instructor in a question-and-answer format; student-led presentations of slides on a topic of interest, etc.).

Students will be required to carry out readings and prepare certain assignments independently.

In addition to classical culture, each lesson will also offer some glimpses into contemporary culture (e.g., a song by a singer-songwriter, a video of a contemporary exhibition, or other similar materials).

Assessment methods

The final examination will be oral, conducted in Italian, and divided into two parts:

1.in the first part, students will be asked a question that may pertain to any of the thematic areas covered during the course;

2.in the second part, students will have the opportunity to present a specific topic of their own choosing, prepared in advance. The use of slides is not required but may be employed as a supporting tool. The presentation will take the form of a monologue (without reading from a script) of approximately 10 minutes.

The use of AI for the purpose of researching content-related information is strictly prohibited, owing to the frequent inaccuracies it produces.

AI may be used solely for terminological exercises carried out independently, as well as for the processing of images or other formal aspects that do not pertain to the substantive content.

Teaching tools

Video and audio recordings, online encyclopedias, and the websites of political institutions and cultural bodies that will be discussed during the course.

Office hours

See the website of Kristina Landa