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Making the Russian Culture Classroom More Inclusive

Mon, November 25, 8:00 to 9:45am, San Francisco Marriott Marquis, Floor: 4, Pacific C

Abstract

With his ascent to power, Vladimir Putin has reinforced this long-established pattern of Russian conservatism, while also, beginning with his 2012 presidential campaign, advocating a more nuanced right-wing, civilizational model, that can be more closely situated in US political fault lines. This conservative ideology, which foregrounds Russia’s distinctiveness and moral superiority to the West, is multi-layered, but as a scholar and teacher of the nineteenth-century realist novel my emphasis in this presentation will be on what the Kremlin has defined as “traditional values,” and how these relate to questions of the family. As a literary genre that also touts itself as distinctively Russian and delves into questions of family and the ties that bind, the Russian novel can be a powerful resource for showing students the rich pluralism of ideas within Russian history and culture, outside the Kremlin’s official positions. 

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