Lincoln's Between Heaven and Hell

[Nicole Monnier]

This past spring, I assigned chapters from Lincoln as background reading
for an intro-level course in Russian/Soviet culture and was pleasantly
surprised by the (generally) positive student response to it. As I wanted
my students to focus their attention (and their papers) on various
'primary' documents (contemporary essays, manifestos, literary texts,
images, etc.), I urged them to read Lincoln as a way of putting those
texts, images and their authors in larger contexts (say, the Petersburg
avant-garde scene before WWI, or the role of cultural production in the
years immediately after the Bolshevik Revolution). I would probably agree
with Emily Tall that to use Lincoln as the only text for the course would
be bewildering and off-putting to students who have little grounding in
Russian culture or the formal study. On the other hand, I found it very
useful indeed as a cultural history textbook, in the same way that one
might otherwise assign a traditional general history of Russia for a civ
course.

The only students who disliked Lincoln (and they were few) were the same
students who wanted me to teach more "military and political stuff" (to
quote one evaluation). However, many more students (esp. those majoring in
the humanities) made it a point to tell me how much they enjoyed the way in
which Lincoln fashioned Russian cultural history into a readable and
engaging narrative.


Nicole


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Dr. Nicole Monnier                      phone: (573)882-3370
Asst. Prof., Russian                    fax:   (573)884-8456
German & Russian Studies
450 GCB University of Missouri          monniern at missouri.edu
Columbia, MO  65211

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