Matthew Kendall, PhD
Assistant Professor
Polish, Russian, and Lithuanian Studies
Pronouns: He/Him/His
Contact
Building & Room:
1602 UH
Address:
601 S. Morgan St.
Office Phone:
Email:
Related Sites:
About
Research Interests:
- The Soviet Novel and Soviet Prose (Platonov, Shklovskii, Kataev)
- Early Soviet Cinema (Vertov, Eisenstein, Kuleshov)
- Sound Studies
- Socialist Realism and Ideological Poetics
- Media Theory
- Television and Seriality
- Russian Modernism
Selected Publications
“Boisterous Utopia: Soviet Sonic Culture and Dziga Vertov’s Enthusiasm” Russian Review 81:3 (July 2022), pp. 528-548
“Stereoscopic Realism: Aleksandr Andrievskii’s Engineers of Illusion” [Стереоскопический реализм: Инженеры иллюзий Александра Андриевского] in Non-standard: Forgotten Experiments in Russian Culture, 1934-64 [НестандАрт: Забытые эксперименты в русской культуре, 1934-64], pp. 79-93. Moscow: NLO, 2021.
Reviews
Review of Arctic Cinemas and the Documentary Ethos (Indiana UP, 2019) in Slavic and East European Journal 64(3): pp.546-547, Fall 2020
Education
Ph.D., Slavic Languages and Literatures - University of California, Berkeley, (2019)
M.A., Slavic Languages and Literatures - University of California, Berkeley, (2014)
B.A., Russian - Reed College, (2010)
Research Currently in Progress
My recent research explores how techniques of listening influenced Russian writers and filmmakers. I am currently at work on a book-length project, tentatively titled Sound Works, which treats listening as a socially, historically, and culturally mediated act, and offers a history of sound reproduction’s impact on artists in the Soviet Union. My subjects all grappled with how to incorporate into Soviet art the chimerical technology of sound reproduction, which amplified state surveillance, facilitated archival preservation, motivated the production of astounding (and troubling) illusions, and smuggled foreign voices into Russia.
Alongside my research into the history of sound and listening, I have taught and written on topics ranging from the prose and poetry of Russian romanticism to 3D cinema and the politics of cinematic special effects. I am also currently laying the groundwork for two future projects. The first will address the nagging recurrence of a baroque aesthetic throughout the Soviet arts, and the second offers a study of the unique forces that motivate contemporary Moscow theater, which envisions the creation of an enlightened public by fundamentally (and often violently) re-interpreting classical Russian repertoire.