Instructor: Kathleen Ahern, Ph.D.,  UNCG German,Russian and Japanese  Studies Department E-mail: k_ahern@uncg.edu Welcome! If you are visiting this site and would like to contribute to the discussion, please contact me at the email address above, or join us in the General Discussion Forum. News Release Awards

Course Description

Learning Goals:

• To understand the historical, literary and cultural contexts which allowed and fostered exchange between Russians and African-Americans.
• To explore the forces that brought these two cultural bodies into contact and the elements within each that sustained this relationship. 
• To examine the cultural, intellectual and literary exchanges between the African-American and Russian communities.
• To discuss race, identity, and voice as literary themes.
• To produce a written response to one or more literary, cultural, or historical developments within the context of the African-American and Russian exchange.

Texts/Readings

• Mary Christopher (pen name for Dorothy West. "Room in Red Square"  and "Russian Correspondence" in Challenge, 1926?
• Fyodor Dostoevsky. Notes from the Underground. (online version)
• W.E.B. DuBois. Souls of Black Folk. (online version)
• Ralph Ellison. "A Very Stern Discipline" from Going to the Territory. New York: Vantage Books, 1986.
• Ralph Ellison. Invisible Man (excerpted). New York: Vantage Books, 1995 (reprint).
• Olga Peters Hasty.  America Through Russian Eyes 1874-1926.  Yale UP, 1988 

"The Black Student"  Vladimir Bogoraz
"City of the Yellow Devil"  Maxim Gorky
"An Iron Mirgorod"  Sergei Esenin
"My Discovery of America" Vladimir Mayakovsky
• Harry Haywood. Black Bolshevik. Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist.  Chicago: Liberator Press, 1978.
• Langston Hughes. I Wonder as I Wander: An Autobiographical Journey. New York: Hill and Wang, 1956. [chapter on Moscow movie]
• The Ways of White Folk. 1933, reprint,New York: Vintage, 1990.
• Otto Huiswood."Speech to the Third International,"  International Press Correspondent 3, 5 January 1923, 14-16.
• Yelena Khanga. Soul to Soul (excerpted). New York: Norton, 1992.
• Claude MacKay.Home to Harlem, 1928. Reprint, Boston: Northeastern UP, 1987.
• Claude McKay.A Long Way From Home, 1937. Reprint, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich, 1970 

--  Negroes in America. English translation by Robert J. Winter, 1923. Reprint, London: National University, 1979.
• Alexander Pushkin. "The Negro of Peter the Great," 1827. (online version)
• Nancy Prince. Life and Travels of Mrs. Nancy Prince. Boston: The Author. 1853. (online version)
• Ilya IIf and Eugene Petrov. Odnoetazhnaia Amerika. Znamia(excerpted), [Little Golden America]. New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1937. (Reprinted 1974). 
• Paul Robeson. Here I Stand (excerpted). Boston: Beacon Press, 1958.
• Robert Robinson. Black on Red: My 44 Years Inside the Soviet Union(excerpted). Washington: Acropolis Books. 1988. 
• Homer Smith. Black Man in Red Russia(excerpted). Chicago: Johnson Publishing Co., 1964. 
• Anna Louise Strong. I Change Worlds: Remaking of an American. New York: Garden City Publishing, 1937.

--. Red Star in Samarkand. New York: Coward-McCann, 1929.
• Ivan Turgenev. "The Singers" from Sketches from a Hunter's Album. New York: Penguin, 1967. (online version)
• Richard Wright. An American Hunger(excerpted). New York: Harper and Row, 1977.

Study Modules/Grading & Evaluation

1. Blacks in Russia: A Historical Perspective 
2. Changing Visions of National Identity: Serfdom, Slavery and Double Consciousness 
3. Black Experience in the Early Communist Party: Post-Revolutionary Period 
4. The Black Pilgrims 
5. Russia and the View to the United States 

• a brief introductory statement intended to orient you to the author(s) and the reading(s) 
• study questions to direct your reading - to consider before you read 
• Web sites, giving resources relevant to your studies - to visit before you read 
• assigned readings 
• short comprehension-based questions - to check yourself after reading the assignments 
• questions for your comments/insights to be posted to the class discussion forum 

 You have four (4) graded activity categories: 
 

Activity	Description	% Grade
Group Project	You will select a related topic with your group and create an additional "module" that will be linked to this web site. The results of your research will be the basis of your final paper. Requirements:  1. Use MLA Style Manual format for citations.	30%
Discussion Forum Participation	For each learning module you are to respond "electronically" to the class discussion forum with your specific reactions to some aspect of the reading assignments. Read more on "communicating over the miles." Requirements: 1. Read and respond to the class discussion forum at least two (2) times per week.	30%
Web-search "Links Listings" - Class Links	Web/library search assignments, asking you to find outside materials that relate or supplement the content of the course. Post one reference related to your project or the assigned reading each week by Friday Requirements: 1. Locate relevant links for each  project.  2. Be sure to include a brief description/ justification for its inclusion in the listing.  3. Do not duplicate links already appearing in the course materials.  4. In the justification, include the full bibliographic citation using the MLA Style Sheet.	10%
Final Presentation Paper	to support your thinking. How to submit essays for grading.  Requirements:   Use MLA Style Manual format for citations.	20%