Summer 2025 Course Offerings
Summer Term I - (May 27 to 3 June 3)
RUSS380C: EURASIA鈥橲 NEW SILK ROAD: TRAADE, EMPIRE AND NATURE (CRN 16498)
Instructor: Aiduosi Amantai (aamanta1@binghamton.edu)
Course Description: This course examines the change in Central Asia from the 18th century to the early 21st century. Despite the rise of maritime trade, Central Asia retained its importance for trade across the Eurasian landmass. With the rise of modern Chinese, British, and Russian empires, it came to be seen as a borderland鈥攁n indeterminate, in-between space. This course explains and challenges this view. Through this course, students will come to better understand how the ancient trade route through this region鈥攖he 鈥淪ilk Road鈥 --changed in the modern era, and how these changes mediated imperial competition, patterns of cultural exchange within Eurasia and between Asia and Europe, and the formation of new states (including both nation-states and multi-ethnic entities). The course will also provide context for understanding China鈥檚 鈥淥ne Belt One Road鈥 initiative, which plans for an updated inland trade route in the region and is a reminder that the Silk Road and its patterns of trade and exchange remain with us today.
General Education Designations: I, N, T, G
TERM II - (July 8 鈥 August 8)
RUSS380D: SCIENCE, POLITICS, AND IDEOLOGY IN THE COLD WAR SOVIET UNION (CRN16499)
Instructor: Iana Shchetinskaia (ishchet1@binghamton.edu)
Description: This course will cover the development of natural and social sciences in the Soviet Union, primarily (although not exclusively) during the Cold War. It will focus in particular on the interplay between domestic politics, foreign policy, ideology, and the agency of scientists in shaping Soviet science. The course will also investigate the intricacies of Soviet science exchange with the United States, as well as Soviet changing perceptions of modernity and international relations. The topics covered will include: the role of ethnographic knowledge in Soviet spatial and demographic imagination, the rise and fall of Soviet genetics, the nuclear arms race and a space race, the relations between Soviet and U.S. social scientists, and others.
General Education Designations: I, N, T, G, C
TERM II - (July 8 鈥 August 8)
RUSS380L: RED WESTERNS: COWBOYS & CROOKS ON SOVIET SCREENS
Instructor: Samantha Sharp (ssharp1@binghamton.edu)
Description: This course examines the genre of the Western as it manifests in films from the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. The title of the course invokes the concept of the 鈥淩ed Western,鈥 a mode of Soviet cinema which appropriates, parodies, and subverts the tropes of Hollywood Westerns, including the gun-slinging cowboy, the indigenous Other, and the coarse landscapes of the supposedly untamed frontier. The professed goal of the Red Western, produced in countries across Eastern Europe during the Cold War era, is usually a biting critique of American capitalism and imperialism, enacted weekly through the formal devices of the Western itself. Red Westerns make rich objects of analysis, posing questions about the possibilities and limits of particular forms and genres, while also illuminating social, political, economic tensions between the Soviet 鈥淓ast鈥 and the American 鈥淲est.鈥
General Education Designations: G, H, J