Topics for Entrance Exam

• Foundations of Culture Studies and research methods.
• Antique Culture: main forms and periods of development.
• The concept of symbol in culture. Its functions.
• Religious Reformation in European Culture. Social and cultural outcomes of Reformation.
• What are Cultural Studies focused on? General challenges of this science.
• First historical forms of culture. Myth and its place in primitive culture.
• Research methods in Cultural Studies.
• A person and a world in Romantism.
• Culture and its interpretation in antique and medieval philosophy, religion and mythology.
• Peculiarities of European medieval culture.
• The place of Culture Studies in the system of other sciences.
• Soviet Culture and its role for the contemporary world civilized society.
• Communication as a condition for social life, individual development and cultural continuity.
• Greek Culture as a source of culture in West Europe.
• The role of social institutions in cultural creation and distribution.
• Unique features of culture in Antique Rome.
• Traditional industrial and postindustrial types of culture.
• The peculiarities of culture in Russia of 17-19 centuries
• The opposition West-East, its typical features and typical characteristics of Russian culture.
• Humanism as the main principle of culture in the epoch of Renaissance.
• Different languages of different cultures as different world vision. Multiple cultural images of the world.
• Infromatization and forming "informational society" – a strategical line of the development of the contemporary culture.
• Western and Eastern models of cultural identity. Contrast of value systems (different concepts of world, environment, society, power, personality, truth, etc.)
• Foundations of new forms of culture in XX century.
• Specific features and contents of cultural text. The problem of text interpretation.
• The main dangers for culture in XXI century
• Cultural symbols and their typology.
• Emperor and reign as the frame of Ancient Oriental culture.
• Dynamic process of cultural changes: theories and models (Neoevolutionism, Rhizome, social and cultural Synergetics, etc.)
• The concepts of cultural crisis in the ideas of West European and Russian thinkers in XX century.
• The conceptual foundations of historical evolution of culture (Evolutionism, cultural diffusion, theory of historical-cultural types and of eternal return, the theory of an Axial Age).
• Peculiarities of not-western societies transition to a new type of civilization and culture. The problem of cultural modernization in Russia.
• Value as the factor for differentiation of natural science and social science. The structure of value.
• An image of God, human being and World in Medieval religious culture.
• Evolution of culture. Variant of cultural state changes and their motive power.
• An image of God, human being and World Ancient Oriental culture.
• Values and specific nature of their manifestation in main fields of human activity.
• Modern and postmodern culture.
• Culture as the system of «rules of the game» and social interaction models.
• Rise of culture and a cultured person. Labor, play, symbolic activity as the origin of culture.
• Cultural studies in today’s global age.
• The main cultural trends in economics, politics, ethics, way of life, art and religion in Early Modern Period.
• Sociocultural system as the unity of society and culture.
• The problem of identity in Russian culture in Westerners’, Slavophils’, and Eurasians discourse.
• The essence of “culture” vs “civilization” opposition. The place and part of culture in civilizing process.
• Adoption of Christianity in Russia and peculiarities of Old Russian medieval culture.
• The evolution of communication in culture-historical human evolution. Marshall McLuhan’s communication theory.
• The principles of all things (nature, space and world) in Classical antiquity.
• The influence of world religions on labour ethnicity, political and culture of different people.
• Features and peculiarities of European culture in Early Modern Period.