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SUMMARY:Terror by Beauty: Russo-Soviet perspectives - Professor Evgeny A D
 obrenko\, University of Sheffield
DTSTART:20110304T173000Z
DTEND:20110304T183000Z
UID:TALK26424@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Janet Gibson
DESCRIPTION:Biography\n\nEvgeny Dobrenko is Professor and Head of the Depa
 rtment of Russian and Slavonic Studies of the University of Sheffield. He 
 is the author\, editor\, or co-editor of twenty books\, and has published 
 more than 250 articles and essays on Soviet cultural and intellectual hist
 ory\, literature\, film\, visual arts\, architecture\, photography\, media
  and music\, Socialist Realism\, and critical theory\, which have been tra
 nslated into eight languages. His books include the monographs Stalinist C
 inema and the Production of History: Museum of the Revolution (Yale Univer
 sity Press\, 2008)\, Political Economy of Socialist Realism (Yale Universi
 ty Press\, 2007)\, Aesthetics of Alienation: Reassessment of Early Soviet 
 Cultural Theories (Northwestern University Press\, 2005)\, The Making of t
 he State Writer: Social and Aesthetic Origins of Soviet Literary Culture (
 Stanford University Press\, 2001)\, The Making of the State Reader: Social
  and Aesthetic Contexts of the Reception of Soviet Literature (Stanford Un
 iversity Press\, 1997)\, Metaphor of Power: Literature of the Stalin Era i
 n Historical Context (Munich\, 1993) and others\, as well as the edited an
 d co-edited volumes Soviet Culture and Power A History in Documents\, 1917
 -1953 (with Katerina Clark\, Yale University Press\, 2007)\, The Cambridge
  Companion to Twentieth-Century Russian Literature (with Marina Balina\, C
 ambridge University Press\, 2011)\, Petrified Utopia: Happiness Soviet Sty
 le (with Marina Balina\, London: Anthem Press\, 2009)\, The Landscape of S
 talinism: The Art and Ideology of Soviet Space (with Eric Naiman\, Univers
 ity of Washington Press\, 2003)\, Soviet Riches: Essays on Culture\, Liter
 ature and Film (St. Petersburg\, 2002)\,  Socialist Realist Canon (with Ha
 ns Günther\, St. Petersburg\, 2000)\, Endquote: Sots-Art Literature and S
 oviet Grand Style (with Marina Balina and Nancy Condee\, Northwestern Univ
 ersity Press\, 1999)\, Socialist Realism without Shores (with Thomas Lahus
 en\, Duke University Press\, 1997)\, and others.\n\nAbstract\n\nDostoevsky
  asserts that Beauty will save the world. However\, in the Twentieth centu
 ry\, Beauty was used by the most barbaric and repressive regimes\, be it i
 n Stalin's Russia\, Nazi Germany\, Fascist Italy\, or Franco's Spain. In t
 he transition to Modern times Beauty lost its sacredness. Its secular equi
 valent – Sublime – was politically instrumentalised by totalitarian re
 gimes which created reactionary populist mobilizational cultural projects 
 based on perfect simulation of Beauty. Therefore\, totalitarian kitsch has
  to be understood not simply as a decline of taste\, but as a byproduct of
  cultural democratization and means of legitimizing terror.\n \n
LOCATION:LMH\, Lady Mitchell Hall
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