R600: Proseminar in Russian and East European Area Studies Fall 2014 Mondays, 4:00-6:00 p.m. Polish Studies Center Professor: Dr. Bogdan Popa geopopa@indiana.edu (812) 2190320 Office hours: by appointment at geopopa@indiana.edu Course Description: R600 is a required course for students seeking the M.A. degree at Indiana University’s Russian and East European Institute. The course is also open to graduate students from other departments. This course provides students with a broad overview of Russian and East European Area Studies. We will examine many of the critical issues currently under discussion in the field. The collapse of socialist regimes since 1989 provides the unifying framework for the course, just as it has for the field. The field of “Russian and East European Studies,” as it developed in American institutions after World War II, took for granted that state-socialism united the (historically, linguistically, religiously, and culturally) diverse countries of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe as a unit of intellectual study and political importance. Since 1989, specialists in area studies have been asking the following questions: How did socialism collapse? What was socialism and what is post- socialism? Is life getting better or worse (since 1989) for ordinary citizens? What type of market capitalism and electoral democracy did formerly socialist states achieve? Who is making policy (political, economic, social, environmental, and linguistic) in the new countries, and what effects will these policies have? Specialists are also asking: Why did nationalism and ethno-separatist movements emerge at the same time as the collapse of socialism? Do we need to look beyond political structure and ideology to history, culture, religion, or social relations in order to understand what is happening in these countries? If so, how do identity, memory, and nostalgia relate to the transition, especially its political dimensions? How do we incorporate gender, sexuality, youth/generations, and class into our analyses of social process in the region? And – can we still think of the former Soviet Union and Eastern