Post-Soviet Geopolitics

Instructor: Renata Mustafina. This 7-week class is designed as a journey through the complex geopolitics of the post-Soviet region, mediated by cultural artifacts, infrastructural objects, specific sites, and landscapes. The class adopts a bottom-up approach to geopolitics, moving beyond state-centric or national-level understandings of international politics to focus on the everyday experience of geopolitics at the micro level (Bono & Stoffelen, 2020; Dodds, 2019; Gaufman, 2023*). Each session aims to locate the “international” and ground various geopolitical processes in both practice and place. This perspective provides a starting point for discussing major geopolitical issues such as war, political violence, ethnic conflict, and energy crises. The six case studies—varied in both time and space—are carefully selected to offer students a glimpse of the diverse geopolitical dynamics in the region, as well as analytical frameworks that can be useful in approaching these dynamics. The seminar adopts an interdisciplinary perspective, engaging with political science, anthropology, literature, geography, and law. In addition to academic research, the seminar will incorporate visuals (photos, maps, videos) to help convey this often physically distant social reality.