Professor Susan E Reid

BA Hons (Leeds), MA (University of Pennsylvania), PhD (University of Pennsylvania), Professor of Russian Visual Culture

Contact details

Telephone: +44 (0)114 222 7410

Biography

After gaining my first degree in Modern Languages (Russian and German) I trained as an Art Historian, specializing in Russian and Soviet art. I taught briefly at Sheffield Hallam University and curated an exhibition of contemporary art from Georgia in 1992 (`Heat and Conduct´) at the Mappin Gallery, Sheffield and Arnolfini, Bristol.

From 1992 to 2000 I taught at Northumbria University on the programme in History of Modern Art, Design and Film. I moved to University of Sheffield in January 2001 where I have developed teaching in Russian and Soviet art and visual culture.

Research interests

Focusing on the Soviet Union of the 1950s and 1960s, my research takes two complementary directions:

history of Soviet everyday culture, material culture, design and consumption;
history of Soviet art.

Both strands are united by an interest in mid-century Soviet modernity and modernism, and in gender issues in the context of the Cold War, as well as in the relation between state, art and design specialists, and audience and popular taste.

I am currently completing a book on everyday aesthetics, socialist modernity and consumption in the Khrushchev-era standard apartment, provisionally entitled Khrushchev Modern: Making Oneself at Home in the Soviet 1960s.

I continue to engage in research on Cold War art and visual culture including Soviet participation in and reception of international exhibitions and World Fairs.

Recent publications (selected)

‘(Socialist) Realism Unbound: The Effects of International Encounters on Soviet Art Practice and Discourse in the Khrushchev Thaw,’ Socialist Realisms: Soviet Painting 1920-1970, edited by M. Bown and M. Lafranconi (Milan: Skira, 2012) 261-76
‘The Soviet Pavilion at Brussels ’58: Convergence, Conversion, critical Assimilation, or Transculturation?’ Cold War International History Project Working Paper No. 62 (December 2010), online
Pleasures in Socialism: Leisure and Luxury in the Eastern Bloc, edited with David Crowley (Northwestern University Press, 2010)
'Communist Comfort: Socialist Modernism and the Making of Cosy Homes in the Khrushchev Era,’ in K. H. Adler and Carrie Hamilton, eds, Homes and Homecomings: Gendered Histories of Domesticity and Return (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010)
‘Happy Housewarming,’ in Marina Balina and Evgeny Dobrenko, eds., Happiness, Soviet Style (London: Anthem Press, 2009), pp. 133-60.
‘Soviet Responses to the American Kitchen,’ in Ruth Oldenziel and Karin Zachmann, eds, Cold War Kitchen: Americanization, Technology, and European Users (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, January 2009), pp. 83-112.
‘Who Will Beat Whom? Soviet Popular Reception of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, 1959,’ Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 9, no. 4 (Fall 2008): pp. 855-904.
‘“Our Kitchen is Just as Good”: Soviet Responses to the American National Exhibition in Moscow, 1959,’ in David Crowley and Jane Pavitt, eds,Cold War Modern (volume to accompany the major exhibition Cold War Modern, V&A, September 2008-, and international venues), (London: V&A Publications, 2008), pp. 141-6.
The Pioneer Palace in the Lenin Hills, Moscow, 1962,’ in V. Kivelson and J. Neuberger, eds, Picturing Russia: Explorations in Visual Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 218-223.
‘Khrushchev Modern: Agency and Modernization in the Soviet Home,’ Cahiers du Monde russe 47, nos. 1-2 (Jan-Jun, 2006), pp. 227-68.
Russian Art and the West: A Century of Dialogue in Painting, Architecture, and the Decorative Arts, ed. Rosalind P. Blakesley and Susan E Reid (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2006).
‘The Meaning of Home: “The Only Bit of the World You Can Have to Yourself,’ in Lewis Siegelbaum, ed., Borders of Socialism: Private Spheres of Soviet Russia (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006), pp. 145-70.
‘The Soviet Art World in the Early Thaw,’ Third Text 20, Issue 2 (March 2006), pp. 161-175. Special issue on 1956, guest edited by Reuben Fowkes and Nancy Jachec.
‘In the Name of the People: The Manege Affair Revisited,’ Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 6, no. 4 (Fall 2005): pp. 673–716.
‘The Khrushchev Kitchen: Domesticating the Scientific-Technological Revolution,’ Journal of Contemporary History 40, no. 2 (April 2005), pp. 289-316.

Recent lectures, papers etc.

Keynote speaker, conference East-West Cultural Exchanges and the Cold War, Jyväskylä, Finland, 14-16 June 2012, online
‘Still life and the Vanity of Socialist Realism’, at conference Socialist Realist Art: Production, Consumption, Aesthetics, Stockholm, Södertörn University and Moderna Museet, October 2012
‘Art and Everyday Life,’ at conference Art and Political Reality, KUMU Art Museum, Tallinn, Estonia, October 2012
‘Khrushchev Modern: Making Oneself at Home in the Soviet Sixties’ in research seminar series L’univers des choses soviétiques, EHESS, Paris, 12 June 2012
‘This is Tomorrow! Becoming Consumers in the Soviet Sixties,’ Designing Socialist Modernity: Perspectives on material culture in post-war Eastern Europe, Royal College of Art, 22 May 2012
Invited participant, conference Design Without Frontiers: Interdisciplinarity & Collaboration in Soviet Art, Architecture & Design, Cambridge, 20-21 September 2012
Public lecture, ‘Friends and Foes of Artistic Change: Destalinization in the Soviet Art World, 1950s-60s,' Pushkin House, London, 19 April 2012.
‘Pictures in the Soviet Home’, paper in seminar series ‘Communist and Post-Communist Times in Central Europe,’ joint seminar series of Institute for Economic and Social History (Prague) and Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for European History and Public Spheres (Vienna), 25 October 2011
The Socialist Sixties, Fisher Forum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA, June 2010.
Public lecture, ‘Display and the Home,’ in lecture series ‘Display in Russian Culture,’ COCREES, Cambridge University, 2010.
‘Soviet-American Perceptions,’ German Historical Institute, Moscow, 4-5 June 2009
Sites of Convergence: The USSR and Communist Eastern Europe at International Fairs Abroad and at Home, Central European University, Budapest, 28-31 May 2009
‘Cosy Communist Homes? Making the Soviet Apartment in the Khrushchev Era,’ London Group of Historical Geographers, seminar series on ‘Historical Geopolitics’: 20 May 2008
Keynote at conference European Cold War Cultures? Societies, Media and Cold War Experiences in East and West (1947-1990) , Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung, Potsdam, April 2007

Research students currently supervised

Claire McCallum
Tom Cubbin
Ming-Hui Huang
Raphaelle Auclert

Teaching

Soviet Visual Culture
Modern Russian Art from Emancipation to the Bolshevik Revolution
Introduction to Russian Culture
Cold War Visual Culture