In 1852, a leading American newspaper proposed that, “As we look into the future, with the past and the present for our guides, we see two great objects looming up conspicuously above all others, Russia and the United States …. What is to be their mysterious fate and their mission in the World? What can we now seize upon to guide us in calculating their future history?” Though the language is dated, these questions loom large in our own day. The class will examine selected moments in the history of US-Russian relations–public and private, commercial and cultural, friendly and hostile, overt and covert—dating back to the American Revolutionary War up through current controversies about Russian subversion in recent US elections. Weekly readings, discussion posts, and integrative semester papers and projects.