News and Opinions
Registration for Fall 2024 courses is now open
Registration for Fall 2024 courses is now open Applications for Fall 2024 courses are now open. We are offering a...
Smolny College Graduate Sasha Skochilenko Released from Russia in Historic Prisoner Swap
Ilya Kalinin, Sasha's advisor during her studies at Smolny, on the momentous occasion.
Public Events
IWT Workshop: Writing to Learn
October, 21– 25, 2024 IWT Workshop at Bard College Berlin
How to get an educational scholarship: personal experience
August, 17, 2024 11 am CET Natalia Fedorova, Zlata Pavlovskaya,...
Contemporary Philosophy at the Crossroads with Nihilism
June, 28, 2024, 7:30 pm – Book Launch with Artemy...
Evgeny Yufit: Exploring a Necrorealist Archive
June 14, 2024, A Screening in the UCL. Presented by...
Fall 2024 Semester Courses
Ancient Culture: Polis, Family, Personality
Ilya Kalinin | F24 M W
Anthropological Aspects of Digital Technology: Introduction to Digital Humanities
Ilya Utekhin | F24 FR
Cognitive Aspects of Conflict Resolution
Michael Allakhverdov | F24 T T
History of History Painting
Maria Chernysheva | F24 T T
History of the World since 1300
Victor Apryshchenko | F24 M W
Introduction to Dialectics
Artemy Magun | F24 M
Introduction to Film Language
Masha Godovannaya | F24 M W
Introduction to Liberal Arts Mathematics
Andrei Rodin | F24 T T
Russian Politics after 1991
Aleksey Gilev | F24 M W
The Russia Paradox: Intellectual History of the Russian Empire
Victor Apryshchenko | F24 TH
Trauma Narratives in Contemporary Russian-language Literature
Larissa Muravieva | F24 TH
Utopian Economic Thinking
Danila Raskov | F24 W
Writing Across Disciplines
Natalia Fedorova | F24 T T
Fall 2024 Mini Courses
Beautiful Russia of the Future: The Political Legacy of Alexei Navalny
Venyavkin, Gessen, Gilev, Kalinin | OCT F24
Comparative Case Studies within the Disability Rights Movement
Vera Shengeliya | SEP – OCT F24
Documentary Poetry: Politics of Memory and the ‘Desire for an Archive’
Galina Rymbu | SEP – NOV F24
Introduction to the Philosophy of Art
Denis Skopin | SEP – OCT F24
Russian Immigrant as a Cultural Hero
Dmitry Bykov | OCT – NOV F24
The Olympics, Charity, and Soviet Legacy
Vera Shengeliya | OCT – DEC F24
Thriller Aesthetics
Dmitry Bykov | SEP – OCT F24
Fall 2024 Graduate Level Courses
Critical Perspectives on Human Rights: Human Rights and Spectatorship
Denis Skopin | F24 W
Archive
Faculty
About
A group of former Smolny College faculty with the support of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, and Bard College Berlin (BCB) established Smolny Beyond Borders (SBB) in November 2022, a liberal arts initiative that continues and builds upon the legacy of Smolny College (formerly a joint program of St. Petersburg State University and Bard College), the longest-running dual degree program between any Russian and American institution.
Smolny Beyond Borders aims to recreate Smolny institutionally, but independently of St.Petersburg State, and establish not only a structure of support for the faculty who left Russia, but provide opportunities to attract, teach, and recruit new students and to sustain the successful practices formerly recognized at Smonly College to build the Russia of the future. The program will provide multi-level educational and research opportunities to equip the next generation of students and faculty with the tools to rebuild and promote a different trajectory for Russia that holds the country responsible as part of the global community.
About Smolny College
Smolny College was a long-term collaboration between St. Petersburg State University and Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. After its founding in 1997, it became both the largest liberal arts program in Russia and the most robust Russian-American partnership in the higher education sphere. In the summer of 2021, the Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation declared that Bard College is an undesirable organization, the first college or university to be so named. This began the dismantling of Smolny, which has since undergone the loss of faculty and curricular changes that have rejected the very idea of liberal arts and sciences education.
The Gagarin Center for the Study of Civil Society and Human Rights (Gagarin Center at Bard College) allows Russian scholars forced to leave Russia as a result of the war on Ukraine, and risks of political persecution, continue to pursue research and educational activities focused on contemporary social, economic, and human rights issues in Russia. Previously, the Gagarin Center, supported by the Gagarin Trust, was a core component of Smolny College. The Center and its fellows offered courses, prepared research on vital issues, offered public programming, and served as a venue for the critical exchange of ideas.