Artists have always used the act of the creation to respond to political issues of their day. This course will chart the development of thinking about the way that art deals with political issues, especially in the context and history of Eastern Europe. This course will strive to be historical, theoretical and practical and will thus encompass elements of all three practices. We will spend the first third of the course reading through and discussing a selection of the classic theoretical texts in the history of aesthetics. Students will be prepared from the very first day of the class to continually and critically think about their end of semester project which will include a creative project eliciting their own artistic response to a particular contemporary problem. This course will examine in part the Ukrainian - Russian war and the sorts of political art that it has produced, as well as the history of political art created by the Soviet Union and Soviet artists.