This course examines recent scholarship dedicated to race, empire, and gender in Eastern Europe and Russia. The course will explore theoretical texts (e.g. decolonial criticism, “second world” feminisms), scholarship on particular case studies (e.g. Catherine Baker’s 2018 Race and the Yugoslav Region), and literature and art that speaks to these issues from the perspective of the East European, Russian, and Soviet experience. We will explore oft-sidelined topics, such as ideologies of race and historicizing whiteness as a colonial formation. The aim of the course is to address some of the silences within Slavic studies by foregrounding the complicated political legacies of the region.