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Courses 2008-09

Below you will find a list of all of the graduate and undergraduate courses in Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies (REEES) offered at Stanford University during the 2008-09 academic year.

CREEES-Sponsored Courses, Autumn 2008

REES 105/205. Central and East European Politics
T/Th, 4:15-5:30 pm, Bldg 200 room 305
Counts as a PoliSci cognate course!

Focus is on how the states of Central and East Europe, including the Baltic states, have moved from communism and the Soviet Bloc to democracy, NATO and the EU. Topics include the communist legacy, transitions and their legacies, ethnic issues, and the evolution of economic and social policies, and the comparison of democratization processes in these countries to democracies in other regions, such as Latin America and southern Europe. GER:DB-SocSci 5 units, Aut (Jane Curry), given once only

Jane Curry is Professor of Political Science at Santa Clara University and joins CREEES for Autumn 2008. She has authored or edited a variety of books, including Polish Journalists: Professionalism and Politics (Cambridge University Press), The Black Book of Polish Censorship (Random House), Dissent in Eastern Europe, Press Control Around the World, and Poland's Permanent Revolution. You may have seen Curry during one of her appearances on the "MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour."

REES 130/330. With God in Russia: Orthodox Christianity in the 19th and 20th Centuries
W, 2:15-4:05 pm, Bldg 50-51P
Counts as a Religious Studies cognate course!

The experience of religion, particularly Orthodoxy, under tsars and commissars. Religion as a lived experience; practice and belief in the provinces and villages, intertwining of religion and folk customs (the so-called double faith); condition of the Church before and after the Revolutions of 1917; religion under Soviet control; and liberation of the Church since the collapse of the Soviet Union. 4-5 units, Aut (Kollmann, J)

Jack Kollmann is the CREEES Lecturer and Academic Coordinator. He holds a PhD in Russian History from Harvard University and has taught many courses on Russian civilization at Stanford and UC Berkeley. He and Professor Nancy Kollmann will be taking a group of Stanford undergraduates to St. Petersburg for a Bing Overseas Seminar in August and September 2008.

CREEES-SPONSORED COURSES, WINTER 2009

POLISCI 140C . The Comparative Political Economy of Post-Communist Transitions (5 units)
T/Th 9:30-10:45 am, Bld 200 room 205

Dominant theoretical perspectives of comparative democratization and marketization; focus is on the political economy of transition in Eastern Europe and Eurasia while comparing similar processes in Latin America and Asia. Topics include: meanings of democracy, synergy between democracies and markets, causes of the collapse of communism, paths to political liberalization and democracy, civil society, constitutions, parliaments, presidents, the rule of law, electoral systems, market requirements, strategies of reform, the Russian experience of market building, exporting democracy and the market, and foreign aid and assistance.

Kathryn Stoner-Weiss is Associate Director for Research and Senior Research Scholar at CDDRL. Prior to coming to Stanford, she was on the faculty at Princeton University for nine years, jointly appointed to the Department of Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School for International and Public Affairs. In addition to many articles and book chapters on contemporary Russia, she is the author of two single authored books: Resisting the State: Reform and Retrenchment in Post-Soviet Russia (Cambridge, 2006), and Local Heroes: The Political Economy of Russian Regional Governance (Princeton, 1997). She is also co-editor (along with Michael McFaul) of After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transitions (Cambridge, 2004).

REES 320. State and Nation Building in Central Asia (5 units)
M 2:15 -4:05 pm, Bld 380-room 380 F
Open to graduate students; cognate course in the Political Science department.

Issues of identity, development, and security following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the emergence of independent states in Central Asia and the Southern Caucasus. Topics include the impact of 9/11, the spread of radical Islamist movements in the region, its growing role as a transit route for drugs, weapons, and possibly nuclear materials, the impact of the Soviet legacy, the nature of political and economic transformations, relations with neighboring countries, security challenges, and options facing U.S. policy makers.

Gail Lapidus is a Senior Fellow Emerita at the Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. Lapidus is also Professor Emerita of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, and served as Chair of the Berkeley-Stanford Program in Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies from 1985 to 1994. A specialist on Soviet society, politics and foreign policy, she has authored and edited a number of books on Soviet and post-Soviet affairs, including The New Russia: Troubled Transformation (Westview Press, 1995), From Union to Commonwealth: Nationalism and Separatism in the Soviet Republics, with Victor Zaslavsky and Philip Goldman (Cambridge University Press, 1992), The Soviet System in Crisis, with Alexander Dallin (Westview, 1992), and Women in Soviet Society (University of California Press, 1979).

REES 35. Self-Determination in Central Asian Cinema of the 1960s and 1990s
1-2 unit activity course, taught by Alma Kunanbaeva (Anthropology).
Open to undergraduates. Offered Winter and Spring 2009.

CREEES-SPONSORED COURSES, SPRING 2009

International Relations 166. Russia and Islam (5 units)
F 9:00-10:50 am. Bld 250 room201

Focus is on 1985 to the present. The policies of Gorbachev toward the Muslim populace of the Soviet Union; how post-communist Russia under Yeltsin, Putin and Medvedev has dealt with its Muslim minorities; and the relationship of Russia to the newly independent states of the South Caucasus after the breakup of the USSR in 1991. The two major wars which Russia has fought with the secessionist Russian autonomous republic of Chechnya.

John B. Dunlop is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is an expert on Russia's two wars in Chechnya, nationalism in the former Soviet Union, Russian cultural politics, and the politics of religion in Russia. His current research focuses on the conflict in Chechnya, Russian politics since 1985, Russia and the successor states of the former Soviet Union, Russian nationalism, and the politics of religion in Russia. His most recent publications include The Rise of Russia and the Fall of the Soviet Empire (Princeton University Press, 1995) as well as numerous articles and chapters in books regarding political, social, and cultural developments in the states of the former Soviet Union. Dunlop's book Russia Confronts Chechnya: Roots of a Separatist Conflict was published by Cambridge University Press in 1998. He has testified on the subject of the current war in Chechnya before the Helsinki Commission in Washington (November 1999) and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (July 2001). He also made a presentation on the subject at the U.S. State Department in March 2002. He was the editor of the Chechnya Weekly (Jamestown Foundation, Washington, D.C.) from 2000 2002.

Anthropology 147A. Folklore, Mythology, and Islam in Central Asia (3-5 units)
MW 1:15-3:05 pm, Bld 200 room 205

Central Asian cults, myths, and beliefs from ancient time to modernity. Life crisis rites, magic ceremonies, songs, tales, narratives, taboos associated with childbirth, marriage, folk medicine, and calendrical transitions. The nature and the place of the shaman in the region. Sources include music from the fieldwork of the instructor and the Kyrgyz epoch "Manas." The cultural universe of Central Asian peoples as a symbol of their modern outlook.

Alma Kunanbaeva specializes in cultural anthropology, ethnomusicology, storytelling, and linguistics. Native of Kazakhstan, she defended Ph.D. from the State Institute of Theatre, Music and Cinematography in St. Petersburg, Russia. While in Russia, she was the Chairman of the Research Department of Ethnography of the Peoples of Central Asia and the Caucasus, at the State Ethnographic Museum of the Peoples of the former USSR in then Leningrad. Since 1993 she has taught anthropological and linguistic courses at various American universities. Presently she is Visiting Professor at Stanford University, teaching such courses as "Nomads of Eurasia," "Women in Islam," "Folklore, Mythology, and Oral Literature of Central Asia", among others. She is the author of numerous scholarly articles including the principal encyclopedic entries on Kazakh traditional music in the New Grove's Dictionary of Music & Musicians (Second Edition, vol. 13, UK, 2001), in the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music (vol. 6, N.Y., 2002), and in the Encyclopedia of Women's Folklore and Folklife (Greenwood Press, 2008.) She is a co-author (with Wayne Eastep as a photographer) of The Soul of Kazakhstan, published in New York in 2001.

Special Languages Courses in Albanian, Czech, Georgian, Hungarian, Kazakh, Polish, Romanian, Serbo-Croatian, Ukrainian, Ukrainian for Speakers of a Slavic Language, Uzbek, and Yiddish.
Available on demand on the beginning, intermediate, and advanced level.