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 everyday culture and consumption;
history of Soviet art.

Both strands are united by an interest in mid-century Soviet modernity and modernism, in material and visual culture, 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 working on a project `Everyday Aesthetics in the Modern Soviet Flat,´ funded by the Leverhulme Trust, which examines homemaking practices, consumption and popular taste in new housing erected in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

I am also engaged in study of Soviet participation in the Brussels World Fair of 1958 and of Soviet reception of the American Exhibition in Moscow in 1959. The third volume I have edited with David Crowley (Royal College of Art), is forthcoming in 2010 under the title Pleasures in Socialism: Leisure and Luxury in the Bloc. (Northwestern University Press).

I am organizing the forthcoming workshop in the series Situating Culture, funded by CEELBAS: Home/Culture, Humanities Research Institute, University of Sheffield, January 2010.

Recent publications (selected)

‘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.
‘Communist Comfort: Socialist Modernism and the Making of Cosy Homes in the Khrushchev-Era Soviet Union, Gender and History 21, issue 3 (Autumn  2009): pp. 465-98. (Theme issue, ‘Home and Homecomings’.)
‘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 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
Guest speaker, Institute of East European History and Slavic Department, University of Tübingen, Germany, July 2006
‘Living in the Communist way: Housing Administration, Participatory Government, and the Cultivation of Socialist Community,’ 38th Annual Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Washington, DC, November 2006
‘Domestic Space: making khrushchevki standard apartments into home,’ invited participant in colloquium Mastering Space, Historisches Kolleg, Munich, Germany, July 2006
‘Happy Housewarming!’ invited participant in colloquium Happiness Soviet Style, Nottingham May 2006
‘”Our Kitchen is Just as Good”: Soviet reception of the American kitchen in Moscow, 1959’. Invited speaker, study day on The Soviet Union after Stalin. School of Slavonic and East European Studies, London, April 2005

Research students currently supervised

Claire McCallum

Teaching

Soviet Visual Culture
Modern Russian Art
Modern Russian Art from Emancipation to the Bolshevik Revolution
Introduction to Russian Culture
Movements in Russian Culture: Realism, Modernism and Beyond
Aspects of Post-Soviet Russian Culture