gordienko

gordienko@arizona.edu

Phone

520-621-9790

Office

Learning Services Building 332

Office Hours

Please contact instructor for office hours

Gordienko, Anastasia

Assistant Professor

Anastasia Gordienko's interests lie in the intersection of Russian and Ukrainian politics, history, culture, and identity. Her monograph Outlaw Music in Russia: The Rise of an Unlikely Genre (UW Press, 2023) explores a paradoxical quid pro quo synergy among Russian criminal music, the shanson, and Putin’s politics.

Dr. Gordienko’s secondary interest embraces the issue of collective remembering: her ongoing empirical study, “Memories of the Past” (Pamiatʹ proshlogo), investigates the role of collective memory in Ukrainian and Russian national self-identity and intergenerational transmission of memories for these nations. Additionally, Dr. Gordienko studies stardom, fame, and politics, with a focus on how the concept of Slavic celebrity evolves during significant socio-political changes.

ORCID iD icon https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5307-4009

Currently Teaching

RSSS 212 – Mythic Russia: Russian Fairy Tales and Folklore

"Mythic Russia" is an invitation to consider a non-Western--Russian--culture's belief system as expressed in its folklore. This course comprises four major themes, articulated in the following categories of texts, both verbal and visual:(1) a survey of Russian demonology, which illustrates the animistic nature of Russian popular beliefs about the world that persist to this day; (2) a large selection of the best-known Russian fairy tales, to be compared with German and English tales; (3) scholarly articles analyzing the differences between folklore and literature and representing various theoretical/critical schools: Structuralism, Marxism, Freudianism; and feminism; (4) literary fairy tales. Visual materials (film, paintings, graphics, and handicrafts) and music inspired by Russian folklore and fairy tales figure regularly in the course. Through examination of such materials and experiential learning activities, students will develop hermeneutical skills, specifically in analyzing fairy tales in order to understand what underlies their strikingly simple yet enigmatic surface. In addition, they will master the principles of various schools of criticism, in the process assessing their relative explanatory power vis-à-vis sundry texts. Finally, students will develop their understanding and appreciation of the intellectual benefits of diverse perspectives and cross-genre continuities provided by an interdisciplinary, multi-media approach to the cultural phenomenon of the Russian folk tale.

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RSSS 280 – Sports and Empire: Sport in Soviet & Post-Soviet Eastern European Society

For almost 100 years, the Soviet Union and Russia have used large sporting events for both geopolitical and domestic purposes. In the Soviet Union sport was not only a means of entertainment, but also a key element of state propaganda. Through sport, the new Soviet person was to be made. By 1956, the Soviet Union took home more Olympic medals than the US team, setting the stage for a rivalry between capitalist and socialist states that would last throughout the Cold War era. This course will explore the birth of sport in Russia and Eastern Europe, trace how the Soviet system created a propaganda machine out of international sporting competition, and how the Soviet legacy continues into the modern day. We will also discuss contemporary sporting issues--such as doping scandals and the hosting of international events--to analyze how sport is used as a projection of identity, resistance and/or power in the global arena.

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RSSS 320 – Criminal Russia: From Rasputin to Putin

In contemporary Russia -- marked by extreme inequality; political prosecutions; government discrimination against racial, ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities; extensive corruption, and prisoners' human rights violations -- the illegal has permeated the legal. "Criminal Russia" centers on the concept of power, and specifically, on the process of its consolidation and application by legitimate and illicit structures, and on the effect these processes have on different populations. To do this, the course begins with considering the influence of crime on the government in imperial Russia and the nation's fascination with a glorified criminal archetype. Then, moving to the more recent period, "Criminal Russia" explores the oppressive nature of the Soviet state, realized in unlawful mass incarcerations into Gulags; the interweaving of the criminal code into Russian politics; the rise and (alleged) fall of the Russian mafia; the country's penitentiary system as a reflection of societal power verticals and the collective sense of right and wrong; and the paradoxical place of the criminal culture within the national consciousness. Upon completing the course, students will be able: (1) to critically analyze issues of power (and power abuse) by the state and by its shadow using various disciplinary approaches, (2) to address issues of freedom, oppression, incarceration, and human rights, in Russia and elsewhere, and (3) to explain how counter cultures subvert dominant ideologies.

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RSSS 696E – Post-Soviet Literature and Culture of Russia, Eastern Europe and Eurasia

This course provides an in-depth overview of the major literary and artistic trends of the late 20th Century to the present day, surveying the transition from the Soviet to post-Soviet period, with a special focus on how Postmodernism interacts with and/or reflects the Post-Soviet condition. Students will explore a variety of responses to the legacy of state communism and the transition to a new political and economic regime. We will discuss the rise of Postmodernism in the late 20th century and its relation to the period of transition in the 1990s. Students will be able to discuss recurrent themes in this multinational literature (such as paranoia, carnival, dislocation, corporeal experience, crime and mafia, nostalgia) and the varied literary techniques employed (palimpsest texts, unreliable narrators, misdirection and mystification, use of popular genres, metanarrative). Finally, we will consider how the literary traditions of the region evolve and respond to contemporary events and trends in the 21st century as the various nations in the region embark on a search for a post-Soviet national identity.

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