NES 6530 - The Caucasus: Captives, Cultures, Conflicts

(crosslisted) ANTHR 7030
(CU-ITL)

Spring. 3 credits. Letter grades only.

Co-meets with ANTHR 4030/NES 4530.

L. Khatchadourian.

The Caucasus occupies a distinctive place in the historical and cultural imagination, a region long anchored to tropes of disobedience, punishment, and redemption. It is also a place in which liminality, betwixt and between Europe and Asia, endures as both a perceived geographic imaginary and an experienced condition in the detritus of Persian, Ottoman, Russian, and Soviet imperialisms. This course explores the Caucasus through its anthropology, history, and cultural production, with a particular focus on the Russian conquest, Soviet socialism, and the conflicts and capitalist formations of the post-Soviet decades. We will examine the entanglements of the region’s history, political economy, and geopolitics in order to get a sense of the array of forces shaping the Caucasus today.