SLAVIC 36N: Get Your Own Toothbrush: Experiments in Communal Housing and their Discontents
Course Description
Who do we become when we live with strangers? How does it transform us—for good or for ill—to share our living space, our kitchens, our bathrooms? Can communal living show us how to transform society for the better, or indeed for the worse? Why have so many political, social, and spiritual self-styled revolutionary movements, from 1870s Paris to 1920s Moscow to 1960s San Francisco, so strongly emphasized radical changes in domestic life and the importance of collective living? In this course, we will examine utopian experiments in collective housing, both as forms of resistance and as environments that have themselves been resisted. Drawing from urban and social history, as well as literature, film, and other art forms, we'll explore the significance of how people live together, as well as the hostile reactions that utopian housing projects have often provoked. We'll also investigate sites of communal dwelling that are close to us in California (beyond Stanford's frosh housing).
Meet the Instructor: Dominick Lawton
“Welcome to Stanford! I'm an Assistant Professor in the Slavic Department in the DLCL (Division of Literatures, Cultures, & Languages). My research focuses on everyday life and culture, especially literature and film, in two 20th century socialist East European countries: the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. More specifically, I look at artistic reactions to the material realities of daily life, like housing and consumer objects, and how those took on new forms under socialism. I want to teach this course both because of my research and due to my own brief experience with communal life. At Stanford, I've also taught classes on literature and war, on the novels of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, on dissent and protest in the post-Soviet world, and more. I'm looking forward to meeting you.”
