Left Perspectives on Method II: Slavic Studies beyond Slavic Studies: New Transnational and Interdisciplinary Approaches to Soviet Cinemas

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Brief Description

This roundtable introduces new takes on Soviet cinema from several up and coming authors. Each of our panelists has recently published — or will soon publish — a book that approaches Soviet avant-garde film from a transnational and/or interdisciplinary perspective. In Antifascism and the Avant-Garde (2025), Julia Alekseyeva re-evaluates how leftist filmmakers from France to Japan utilized the tactics and aesthetics of Soviet filmmakers to combat fascism. In Soviet Docufictions After Stalin (2025), Zdenko Mandušić examines how Soviet filmmakers blended documentary and fiction film practices in novel forms. In City Symphonies: Sound and the Composition of Urban Modenity, 1913-1931 (2024), Daniel Schwartz considers how sound experiments in Italy, Germany, and the Soviet Union influenced the development of the silent city symphony film. In Monuments Askew: An Elliptical History of the Factory of the Eccentric Actor (2025), Maria Corrigan develops a “transnational media theory of eccentricity” that casts Soviet avant-garde cinema in a new light. Finally, in Revolutions per Minute: Sound Recording and the Soviet Creative Imagination (Forthcoming: 2026), Matthew Kendall provides a cultural history of sound recording that “explores its impact on literary and cinematic production in the first half of the Soviet century.” We will be joined by Masha Salazkina, author of World Socialist Cinemas (2023), who will facilitate a dialogue between the panelists and the audience about the challenges, discoveries, and advances in this field. We will assess what we have learned, as well as what remains to be explored.

Sub Unit

• Cinema, Television, Electronic Media

Chair

• Maria Masha Salazkina, Concordia U (Canada)

Roundtable Speakers

• Julia Alekseyeva, U of Pennsylvania

• Maria Corrigan, Emerson College

• Matthew Kendall, U of Illinois at Chicago

• Zdenko Mandusic, U of Toronto (Canada)