The primary focus of this course is to introduce students to signature literary and cultural texts from the post-Stalin era to the present. The quintessential trends of Russian literature and culture of the past several decades include the collapse of Soviet identity, and with it searches for national identity, contesting ideas of gender, and attempts to capture Post-Soviet transition through documentary film and the documentary in literature. These topics connect to social critique, dissidence, counterculture, and their literary and cinematic products.