Exploring Russian Culture: English-language Course for Expats

The Educational Division at the Moscow Department of Culture launches an English-language course, Exploring Russian Culture. The first series of seminars dedicated to Russian culture for expatriates will take place in the Educational Division at the Moscow Department of Culture. The course will start on November 14^th 2016. The lectures will be held in English. The course is free. Several HSE scholars are going to be among course lecturers.

Usually an exploration of Russian cultural identity starts with famous names and masterpieces — Sergei Diaghilev's Russian Seasons, Rachmaninoff, Chaliapin, Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Kandinsky, Rodchenko, Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris. The aim of this course is to help you avoid getting lost in all the cultural traditions and epochs, to organize and systemize your existing knowledge about Russian culture, and to find out more about those who have influenced its development.

These lectures will cover the entire history of Russian theatre, music, literature, and Russia’s controversial Soviet heritage, also looking at life hacks such as contemporary Russian customs and manners, linguistic traps etc.

The speakers are top-ranking experts in their different fields, including literature, theater, music, cinema, and etiquette. Among them are Olga Roginskaya from HSE School of Cultural Studies; art historian and curator of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art archive Sasha Obukhova; the Moscow Studies expert, and founder of the Moskultprog and Moscow Architectural Velonotte projects Sergei Nikitin; Lyudmila Alyabieva, the chief editor of the journal Theory of Fashion: Clothes, Body, and Culture and lecturer at HSE and the British Higher School of Art and Design; Jan Levchenko, professor at the HSE School of Cultural Studies, author of courses on the theory and history of cinema; and Russian designer, curator and director of the Moscow Design Museum Alexandra Sankova.

The sessions will run twice a week from November 14^th until December 14^th, mostly during evenings from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm.The lectures will be useful for expatriates living in Moscow who want to immerse themselves in the culture of Russia. The course consists of 12 lectures. To get more information and apply please visit the website. 

 Course schedule (DOCX, 20 Кб)

The general media partner is Russia Beyond The Headlines.

HSE also offers a free online course Understanding Russians taught by HSE Professor Mira Bergelson on Coursera. The nearest course starts on November 28.