Reading Recommendations
Happy New Year!
We would like to start the new year with some reading recommendations. Members of the Russian Art and Culture Group have been involved in many publications over the past year and we would like to draw your attention to four of them.
Enjoy reading and a successful 2024 for all our friends and members!
First, we would like to congratulate Roann Barris to her monographic publication Reclaiming and Redefining American Exhibitions of Russian Art. Many will remember when Roann presented her exciting material at our seventh workshop in September 2019. We are therefore all the more delighted that her findings are now accessible to everyone.
On 170 pages, illustrated with 16 reproductions, Roann examines the history of American exhibitions of Russian art in the twentieth century, presenting the complex interactions between museums and governments, and the different approaches of curators in the context of the Cold War.
Congratulations, Roann, on this wonderful book!
Louise Hardiman edited the rich volume on Courtly Gifts and Cultural Diplomacy: Art, Material Culture, and Russian-British Relations as the 24th volume of the series Russian History and Culture at Brill! It is available as hard cover print and as e-book.
In thirteen chapters divided into four thematic parts, this richly illustrated volume presents the diverse practices of giving and receiving gifts between the British and Russian Empires on almost 400 pages. Compelling case studies highlight the nuanced nature of British-Russian artistic diplomacy from the sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries.
The editor Louise Hardiman presented this wonderful publication together with Ekaterina Heath, Allison Leigh, and Cynthia Coleman Sparke in the NYU 19v. Seminar Series in September 2023. So, if you would like an introduction by the authors, just watch the recording online.
The next publication that we would like to recommend is already impressive in its scope. Picturing Russian Empire is an edited volume with 55 articles by renowned international art historians and cultural scientists; members of the Russian Art and Culture Group among them. It is published as paperback and e-book at Oxford University Press.
Valerie Kivelson, Sergei Kozlov, and Joan Neuberger compiled a collection covering more than a millennium of Russian and Soviet history, from medieval Rus until today. On around 550 pages, the 55 articles are divided upon six parts, each dedicated to a certain era (see Table of Contents). With the last four contributions, the editors react to the current political situation and Russia’s unlawful war in Ukraine.
The multifaceted approach of this publication provides an impressive overview of many different aspects of current historical research. Enjoy exploring it!
The special issue on “Framing Environments in Russia: Critical Reflections on Ecology, Culture and Power” of the Venice University journal Lagoonscapes: The Venice Journal of Environmental Humanities offers a different perspective on sociopolitical structures in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.
Roberta Sala and Nadia Caprioglio co-edited an interesting volume with ten perspectives on the perception of the environment in Russian and Soviet culture and society on 170 pages.
Best of all, this edition is an open-access work just waiting for you to download it.
