How have former and present socialist countries treated women, Indigenous groups and ethnic, racial and sexual minorities within their borders? How have socialist economies shaped culture, education and social relations in these countries? The course explores these questions historically in former socialist countries in the Soviet Union, Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans, as well as socialist political formations in Africa and Latin America, and contemporary socialist states such as China and Cuba. The course readings chart a heterogeneous globalized milieu of socialist ideologies, state instrumentalities, social relations, cultural productions, and individual and group identities underlining the failures and/or prosperity of socialist societies and states.

The course will position students for historical, critical and comparative research and theorizing of the realities, limitations and possibilities of both state socialism(s) and capitalism(s). It introduces students to these formations from the perspective of the emerging international field of Postsocialist Studies, focusing especially on race, gender, (post)coloniality, education, global capitalism, culture, and nation-building in former and current socialist states and societies.