Maria Engström
Professor at Department of Modern Languages; Slavic Languages
- Telephone:
- +46 18 471 13 05
- E-mail:
- maria.engstrom@moderna.uu.se
- Visiting address:
- Engelska parken, Thunbergsvägen 3 L
- Postal address:
- Box 636
751 26 UPPSALA
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Short presentation
Maria Engström is Professor of Russian at the Department of Modern Languages, Uppsala University. Her research focuses on Russian neoconservative intellectual milieu, imperial aesthetics in contemporary literature and art, late Soviet underground ‘occulture’, post-Soviet utopian imagination, and the role of the Orthodox Church in contemporary Russian politics.
Research
1. Current Project: No(w)stalgia of Modernity: Neo-Soviet Myth in Contemporary Russian Culture (funded by the Swedish Research Council, 2020-2024). Maria Engström (PI) & Aleksei Semenenko (CI)
The main goal of the project is to elucidate the most important spheres in which the neo-Soviet myth is perpetuated and used by various actors in the creation of new “post-post-Soviet” identity. One of the innovative points of the present study is that it will perform a systematic analysis of the key elements of the neo-Soviet myth as a complex aesthetic, ideological and commercial phenomenon. The project will thus fill in the gap in the studies on contemporary cultural and political discourses in Russia by analyzing this less studied but no less important aspect of contemporary Russian popular culture.
2. Current Book Project: The Oxford Handbook of Soviet Underground Culture, edited by Mark Lipovetsky, Ilja Kukuj,Tomas Glanc, Maria Engström and Klavdia Smola, Oxford University Press (2022)
https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197508213.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780197508213
3. Project: Visuality without Visibility: Queer Visual Culture in Post-Soviet Russia (funded by the Swedish Research Council, 2017-2019)
Maria Engström (PI) & Vlad Strukov (CI)
The project explores the history of queer visuality in Russian arts and media and how it’s been appropriated by the government, disabling queer visibility and disempowering LGBTQ communities in their struggle for civil rights. While we focus on art communities and practices such as painting, sculpture, photography and film, we’re concerned with broader social and political issues regarding free expression of identity and civil rights. Russia provides a case for the countries that share a legacy of communist ideology, sexual oppression and control. We’ll use an interdisciplinary approach of visual studies, work with archival materials, and uphold the critical study of images to analyse post-Soviet queer visuality.
Publications
Recent publications
- Ryssland som civilisation (2025)
- “Renaissance and Resistance: Exhibiting Queer Art in Post-Soviet Russia" (2024)
- “Queering Socialist Realism: Timur Novikov and Georgy Guryanov” (2024)
- “Ryssland som civilisation” (2024)
- Conservatism as Affect (2024)
All publications
Articles
- Ryssland som civilisation (2025)
- How the ‘90s Have Become a Source of Inspiration for Pop Artists (2023)
- Efter ikonen – kyrkan, konsten och politiken i dagens Ryssland (2023)
- "We don’t support the ‘special operation’, we’re carrying it out” (2022)
- ”Русский метамодернизм: нео-рейв и культурный ресайклинг 90-х” (2022)
- Les ”guerriers-écrivains” russes (2022)
- ”Russian Metamodernism: the neo-rave and cultural recycling of the 1990s" (2022)
- Советская научная фантастика как источник идеологии украинского будущего (2022)
- Recycling of the Post-Soviet Counterculture, and the New Aesthetics of the "Second World" (2021)
- Ресайклинг позднесоветской контркультуры и новая эстетика «второго мира» (2021)
- Editorial (2021)
- Александр Гудков и русский квир-поворот 2020-х (2020)
- På rymdens botten: (2020)
- Alexander Gudkov and Russia’s queer turn in the 2020s (2020)
- “A War of Songs: Popular Music and Recent Russia-Ukraine Relations” (2019)
- Cultural recycling Metamodern flows in Russia's culture (2019)
- Нефть в современном российском искусстве (2019)
- Recycling der Gegenkultur Die neue Ästhetik der „Zweiten Welt“ (2019)
- Utopins återkomst och ”den sovjetiska antikens” andra liv (2019)
- Консервативное несовершенство (2018)
- Conservative imperfection (2018)
- ‘A Hedgehog Empire’ and ‘Nuclear Orthodoxy’ (2018)
- «Ежовая империя» и «Атомное православие» (2018)
- Метамодернизм и постсоветский консервативный авангард: (2018)
- Визуальная культура и идеология (2018)
- Die Internationalisierung des Hochschulwesens und das Fernstudium von russischer Sprache und Literatur in Schweden (2018)
- Monetochka: (2018)
- Against the New Middle Ages: (2018)
- Metamodernism and Post-Soviet Conservative Avant-Garde (2018)
- Late Soviet Counterculture and New Russian Globalism (2018)
- Глобализм и патриотический ремейк (2018)
- Монеточка (2018)
- The new antiquity versus the new Middle Ages (2017)
- The New Russian Renaissance (2017)
- Religious terror in modern Russia (2017)
- Rymden som Rysslands nationella idé (2017)
- «До «Матильды»: новая опричнина и идея сакрального террора в современной России» (2017)
- «Новая Античность» против «Нового Средневековья» (2017)
- «Новый Русский Ренессанс» (2017)
- Antiken och den samtida ryska konsten (2017)
- Recension av Лариса Мокробородова, Quaestio nostro saeculo inusiatata. Русское православие в тезисах Йоханнеса Ботвиди «Христиане ли Московиты?» (1620), Åbo Akademis förlag, 2013 (2016)
- Apofaattisuusja houkkuus venäläisessä nykykirjallisuudessa (2016)
- Recension av Bjørn Nistad, Eldre russiskidéhistorie – fra middelalderen til opplysningstiden, Nordisk Östforum (2016)
- Daughterland [Rodina-Doch’]: Erotic patriotism and Russia’s future (2016)
- «Родина-дочь: эротический патриотизм и будущее России» (2016)
- The Scent of a Former Life: The Czech Adaptation of the Strugatskiis’ story Malysh’ (2015)
- Постсекулярность и цифровой антиклерикализм в Рунете (2015)
- Den europeiska skönhetens ryska väktare (2014)
- ”Contemporary Russian Messianism and New Russian Foreign Policy” (2014)
- Nytt kapitel för Putins euroasiatiska dröm (2012)
- Imperiedröm ger luft åt rysk nykonservatism (2011)
- Venäjä (2010)
- Апофатика и юродство в современной русской литературе [Apophaticism and Jurodstvo in Contemporary Russian Literature] (2010)
- Recension av Natalia Baschmakoff, Paul Fryer and Mari Ristolainen (red.), “Text and Communities: Soviet and Post-Soviet Life in Discourse and Practice” (2009)
- Neo-Eurasianismen och den Konservativa revolutionen (2008)
- 'Иже херувимы': K истории переводной славянской гимнографии (1997)
Books
- The Oxford Handbook of Soviet Underground Culture (2024)
- Slovo (2023)
- Slovo. Journal of Slavic Languages, Literatures and Cultures, No. 62, 2021 (2021)
- Digital Orthodoxy: Mediating Post-Secularity in Russia (2015)
- Матрешка. Пособие для практических занятий по русскому языку. Уровень 1/Matryoshka. Thematic Exercises in Spoken Russian. Level 1 (2011)
- Херувимские песнопения в русской литургической традиции (2004)
Chapters
- "Late-Soviet Occulture: Evgenii Golovin and the Iuzhinskii Circle" (2024)
- ”Theoretical Problems of Soviet Underground Culture” (2024)
- “Recycling the Underground: Archive and Memory Politics in Contemporary Russia” (2024)
- Queering Socialist Realism (2023)
- “Russia as the West’s queer other: Gosha Rubchinskiy’s politics of fashion” (2021)
- Transgressing the Mainstream: Camp, Queer and Populism in Russian Visual Culture (2021)
- Re-imagining antiquity: (2020)
- "The New Eurasian Man: Post-Soviet Conservatism as a Countercultural Aesthetic Project" (2018)
- Daughterland:Contemporary Russian Messianism and Neo-conservative Visuality (2017)
- Neo-cosmism, Empire, and Contemporary Russian Art: Aleksei Belyaev-Gintovt (2017)
- Russia as 'Katechon': Neo-Conservatism and Foreign Policy (2017)
- ”Post-Secularity and Digital Anticlericalism on Runet” (2016)
- Apollo against Black Square: Conservative Futurism in Contemporary Russia (2016)
- Новая опричнина и идея “сакрального террора” в современной России (2016)
- ‘Orthodoxy or death!’: Political Orthodoxy in Russia (2015)
- Ikonens metamorfoser i det postsovjetiska Ryssland (2014)
- Military Dandyism, Cosmism, and Eurasian Imper-art (2013)
- Forbidden Dandyism: Imperial Aesthetics in Contemporary Russia (2012)
- Politisk ortodoxi (2012)
- Фигуры тождества в Херувимской Великой Субботы: о риторике одного литургического гимна (2000)
Conferences
- “Renaissance and Resistance: Exhibiting Queer Art in Post-Soviet Russia" (2024)
- “Queering Socialist Realism: Timur Novikov and Georgy Guryanov” (2024)
- “Ryssland som civilisation” (2024)
- Conservatism as Affect (2024)
- Russia as Affect: Metamodernism and the civilizational turn in Russian popular culture (2024)
- Orientation—North: Political occultism and necroaesthetics in contemporary Russia (2024)
- “Russia as affect: Slovo patsana and the civilizational turn of the 2020s” (2024)
- “Slovo Patsana and the Aesthetics of Russian Anti-World” (2024)
- “Dark Petroaesthetics: The Crude Ghosts of Soviet Oil” (2024)
- “Putinism as Affect: The Civilizational Narrative and Metamodern Identity Politics” (2024)
- “Envisioning Alternative Futures for Petrostates: ‘Dark Petroaesthetics’ and the Illiberal Oil Myth in Popular Culture of Russia and Azerbaijan” (2024)
- Russia's Worldview: Katechon and Atomic Orthodoxy (2023)
- Russian Alt-Art (2023)
- Recycling of the 1990s in contemporary Russian popular culture (2023)
- Commercializing the Nostalgia: "Atomic Heart" (2023)
- Oleksiy Arestovych and his “Fifth Project” for the future Ukraine (2023)
- Russian neo-rave: metamodernism and cultural recycling of the 1990s (2023)
- PetroArt: Oil in Contemporary Russian Visual Arts (2023)
- Orientation - North: From The Iuzhinskii Circle to “Civilization of DiviZion" (2023)
- Neo-Soviet myth and Memory Politics in Contemporary Russia (2023)
- Russian Mnemonic Resistance: Neo-Rave and Cultural Recycling of the 90s (2022)
- Cultural forms of protest in contemporary Russia (2022)
- Queering the mainstream: Alexander Gudkov and cultural recycling of the Soviet 80s (2021)
- ”Recycling the Underground: Socialist Ruins and Memory Practices in Contemporary Russia” (2021)
- Gosha Rubchinskiy: (2019)
- Georgy Guryanov: Queering Socialist Realism (2019)
- Visualizing messianism: (2019)
- Консервативный андеграунд: Евгений Головин и Южинский кружок (2019)
- Тягучая современность и свежее прошлое: ресайклинг позднесоветской контркультуры и новая эстетика «второго мира» (2019)
- «Аполлон против Черного квадрата: постсоветский консерватизм как контркультурный проект» (2018)
- Russian Queer Art Communities (1980s and 1990s): Timur Novikov’s New Artists and New Academy (2018)
- Queer dissent: Visuality and Counter-Hegemonic Resistance in Late Soviet Russia (2018)
- Utopins återkomst: ”Den sovjetiska antiken” och den nykonservativa konsten (2018)
- Against the New Middle Ages: Imperial Remodernism in Contemporary Russian Visual Culture (2018)
- Gosha Rubchinskiy: (2018)
- From Sexual Revolution to ‘Sexual Sovereignty’: Queer-Art Exhibitions in Post-Soviet Russia (2017)
- Космос наш!: Telluro-Cosmic Utopia and Neoconservative Contemporary Russian Art (2017)
- Queering Socialist Realism: Timur Novikov’s New Academy (2017)
- Cosmos as Russian National Idea (2017)
- Re-imagining Antiquity: The Discourse of 'True Europe' in Neoconservative Subculture(s) and Kremlin’s New Cultural Policy (2016)
- The Messianic Concept of 'Katechon' in Contemporary Russian Culture and Politics (2016)
- Daughterland [Rodina-Doch’]: Personification of Homeland in Neo-Conservative Russian Art (2016)
- Космическая литургия: православная экология Татьяны Горичевой (2016)
- Georgy Guryanov: 'Soviet Antiquity' and the New Return of the Athletic Body (2015)
- Conservative Revolution and Contemporary Russian Art (2015)
- Reconstructing Katechon: Neoconservatism and the New Russian Foreign Policy Concept (2014)
- Post-Imperial Sublime: Alexey Belyaev-Guintovt’s neo-avant-garde dreams of Eurasian Empire (2014)
- Интерактивное дистанционное преподавание русского языка в Швеции (2014)
- Eurasian Empire in Contemporary Russian Art (2013)
- Запах бывшей жизни: Чешская экранизация повести А. и Б. Стругацких 'Малыш' (2013)
- Russian Neo-Conservatism and Foreign Policy (2013)
- Новая опричнина и идея 'сакрального террора' в современной России (2013)
- Soviet Antiquity in Contemporary Russian Visual Arts (2012)
- Rymden som Rysslands nationella idé (2012)
- Работа в красном: Алхимический парад Алексея Беляева-Гинтовта (2011)
- Ikonen och samtiden (2011)
- Русский консервативный постмодернизм: Александр Дугин и нео-евразийство (2007)
- Юродство и апофатика в современной русской культуре (2007)
- Att beskriva det obeskrivbara: hymn och ikon i ryskortodox tradition (2004)