Post-Soviet Literature in Ukraine and Russia

What is the place of postmodernism in post-Soviet Ukraine and Russia? How do these historically related cultures respond to the post-Soviet transition? The course aims to answer the questions through close reading of the literary masterpieces of Ukrainian and Russian postmodernist writers: Andrei Kurkov, Yuri Andrukhovych, Serhiy Zhadan, Liudmila Ulitskaia, Victor Pelevin, Vladimir Sorokin and others. Slavic graduate students read texts in Russian, all other students - in English translation.