ACLS Fellowship Program 2011
Associate Professor
Slavic Languages and Literatures and Comparative Literature
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The Voice of Technology: Soviet Cinema’s Transition to Sound, 1928-1935

Looking at the intersection of art and technology, of politics and policy, and art and the state, this project uses Soviet cinema’s conversion to sound to think about the moment of historical transition (1928-1935) from avant-garde theory to socialist realist practice, and to consider how the “voice” of Soviet power is transmitted via the new technology of film sound.