Cullman Center Institute for Teachers: Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Its Historical Context with Peter Holquist

Peter Holquist, Instructor 

This is a week-long seminar from July 20 - July 24

War and Peace is widely considered one of the greatest achievements in world literature, although Tolstoy himself insisted it was not a novel. Part family romance, part historical epic, part polemic on the nature of history, its sprawling narrative takes place during the events of the French Revolutions and the Napoleonic Wars (1789-1815.) This seminar will consider the book’s historical context as well as its literary qualities. How does the novel help us to understand this momentous era? How does history help us to understand this great novel? Participants will be asked to read and make notes on the novel before the seminar begins.

Peter Holquist, the author of Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia's Continuum of Crisis, is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. He has published widely on Russia's experience in the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and questions of continuity and change from the imperial period into the Stalin era. He was a Cullman Center Fellow in 2013-2014.

The deadline to apply for this seminar has passed.