Professional Affiliation

Professor of Women’s Studies, University of Maryland, College Park

Wilson Center Project

Spectacular Affect: Mass Festivals and Symbolic Politics in Putin’s Russia

Project Summary

This project considers the performative dimensions of Putin’s authoritarianism and the ways they are being mobilized in Russia through spectacular mass festivals. The book-length study focuses on spectacular visual storytelling at Victory Day, the Day of National Unity, Defenders of the Fatherland Day, International Women’s Day, the Sochi Olympics, Russia Day, and the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Repression. It concludes with survey of oppositional visual storytelling on the Internet. In view of current U.S. preoccupation with the Kremlin’s strategic deployment of propaganda, the study is both timely and necessary.

Major Publications

Theatre and Identity in Imperial Russia. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2009.

Women in Russian Theatre: The Actress in the Silver Age, London: Routledge Press,

1996 (Barnard Hewitt Award, 1997).