GOVT 6554

Beyond Totalitarianism: Politics and Everyday Life in (Post) Socialism

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2014-2015.

This seminar explores cultural, social and political transformations in the (post)socialist world through the methods and analytics of socio-cultural anthropology. Students will learn about the contradictions and paradoxes of socialist ideology and practice, and the enclosures and possibilities produced by socialism's fall. By combining theoretical readings, memoirs, ethnographic texts and films about the socialist period, "Beyond Totalitarianism" will foreground the domain of everyday life as the place where the nation-state, collective memory and political subjectivity become reconfigured in powerful and imaginative ways. While purposefully unraveling Cold War epistemologies, the seminar posits postsocialism as a framework and a critical standpoint from which to interrogate the problem of political will, which has been central to liberal conceptualizations of individual freedom and political agency.

When Offered Fall.

Comments Co-meets with ANTHR 4055/GOVT 4554.

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