Academic Team:
Katya Hokanson (hokanson@uoregon.edu)
First-Year Experience Seminar Instructor
Quinn Gulka (qgulka@uoregon.edu)
FIG Assistant
9 credits
UGST 109 First Year Experience Seminar – 1 Credit
CRN: 16261: W: 4:00 – 4:50 PM, LIB 322
RUSS 204 Introduction to Russian Literature – 4 credits
CRN: 14830: MWF: 1:00 – 1:50 PM, LIL 185
HIST 240 War and the Modern World I – 4 credits
CRN: 12505: TR: 2:00 – 3:20 PM, LA 177
About the FIG:
The practice and technology of war is a profound force of history, while literature in the Russian context has long been concerned with social and political questions. The two lecture courses in this FIG offer disciplinary introductions to literature and history and ask basic questions about social, political, and technological change. They converge in an exploration of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia and its profound effects in both Russia and the rest of the world. Students in this FIG usually participate in several activities, such as a trip to Special Collections to view first-hand war diaries, letters and other wartime primary documents, meeting for lunch at the Glenwood restaurant, a tour of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, and a trip to Saturday Market for lunch and Voodoo Doughnuts.
RUSS 204 Introduction to Russian Literature - CoreEd or major satisfying course
In the nineteenth century, Russian literature emerged from obscurity to great fame and acclaim, producing some of the best and most famous writers in the history of literature. Russia, always in struggle with its identity as a nation caught between Europe and Asia, was immersed in issues that became great philosophical questions: What was Russia's national identity and place in history? Should serfdom be abolished? Should women be educated? Should science be relied upon the explain the world? How should one live an ethical and meaningful life? What is the role of literature in history and politics? In this course we read a selection of important writers and poets from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth centuries, including Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev and Chekhov, and address some of the philosophical dilemmas they pose.
HIST 240 War and the Modern World I - CoreEd or major satisfying course
History 240 is the first term of a two-quarter survey of changes in the nature and conduct of warfare within the broader context of social, political, and technological change. History 240 begins in the mid-eighteenth century and continues through the end of World War II. Although much of the course is treats developments in Europe, time is also devoted to warfare in other parts of the world, in particular the colonial wars of the 19th century. Special attention is placed on the Napoleonic period so as to develop a sense of how war was conducted just prior to the major technological changes associate with the industrial revolution. We spend the last several weeks on World War II in order to assess the nature of mass industrialized interstate warfare. The focus of the course, however, is on large-scale changes in the conduct of warfare in the era of industrialization. What about warfare changed between the middle of the eighteenth-century and the end of WWII? And how can we account for those changes?