The course examines the major Russian social and political thinkers and movements in the nineteenth century, and the historical, philosophical and literary contexts in which they were writing. Topics studied may include: the Russian Enlightenment and the growth of rationalism; Decembrism; Chaadaev's "Philosophical Letter"; Russian Hegelianism; the Slavophiles and Westernisers; Herzen and Russian socialism; the tradition of Russian literary criticism from Belinsky to Pisarev; nihilists, liberals, and conservatives in the mid-nineteenth century; populism and anarchism; the foundations of Marxism in Russia. Taught in a combination of lectures and seminars, with weekly readings in English and, for Russian majors, in the original.