From: Dan Rowland
Dear Friends, I write to announce the publication of a new book of essays on
Russian architecture. The volume is the result of a SSRC-funded conference,
and includes essays on landscape as well as architecture. I hope you will be
impressed by the quality of the essays, and the price is right at $25 for
the paperback. Below is the blurb from Cornell UP's catalogue, plus the
table of contents. Many thanks for your attention! Dan Rowland
From the royal pew of Ivan the Terrible, to Catherine the Great's use of
landscape, to the struggles between the Orthodox Church and preservationists
in post-Soviet Yaroslavl-across five centuries of Russian history, Russian
leaders have used architecture to project unity, identity, and power. Church
architecture has inspired national cohesion and justified political control
while representing the claims of religion in brick, wood, and stone. The
architectural vocabulary of the Soviet state celebrated industrialization,
mechanization, and communal life. Buildings and landscapes have expressed
utopian urges as well as lofty spiritual goals. Country houses and memorials
have encoded their own messages.
In Architectures of Russian Identity, James Cracraft and Daniel Rowland
gather a group of authors from a wide variety of backgrounds-including
history and architectural history, linguistics, literary studies, geography,
and political science-to survey the political and symbolic meanings of many
different kinds of structures. Fourteen heavily illustrated chapters
demonstrate the remarkable fertility of the theme of architecture, broadly
defined, for a range of fields dealing with Russia and its surrounding
territories. The authors engage key terms in contemporary
historiography-identity, nationality, visual culture-and assess the
applications of each in Russian contexts.
ARCHITECTURES OF RUSSIAN IDENTITY, 1500 TO THE PRESENT
James Cracaft and Daniel Rowland, Editors
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction
James Cracraft and Daniel Rowland
1 Peter the Great and the Problem of Periodization
James Cracraft
Part I. Muscovite Russia
2 The Throne of Monomakh: Ivan the Terrible and the
Architectonics of Destiny
Michael S. Flier
3 Architecture and Dynasty: Boris Godunov's Uses of
Architecture, 1584-1606
Daniel Rowland
Part II. Imperial Russia
4 Catherine the Great's Field of Dreams: Architecture and
Landscape in the Russian Enlightenment
Dimitri Shvidkovsky
5 Russian Estate Architecture and Noble Identity
Priscilla Roosevelt
6 The Picturesque and the Holy: Visions of Touristic Space
in Russia, 1820-1850
Christopher Ely
7 Constructing the Russian Other: Viollet-le-Duc and the
Politics of an Asiatic Past
Lauren M. O'Connell
8 The "Russian Style" in Church Architecture as Imperial
Symbol after 1881
Richard Wortman
9 Civilization in the City: Architecture, Urbanism, and the
Colonization of Tashkent
Robert D. Crews
Part III. Soviet Russia
10 Stalinist Modern: Constructivism and the Soviet Company Town
Greg Castillo
11 The Greening of Utopia: Nature, Social Vision, and
Landscape Art in Stalinist Russia
Mark Bassin
12 The Rise and Fall of Stalinist Architecture
Andrew Day
PART IV. Post Soviet Russia
13 Conflict over Designing a Monument to Stalin's Victims:
Public Art and Political Ideology in Russia, 1987-1996
Kathleen E. Smith
14 Architecture, Urban Space, and Post-Soviet Russian Identity
Blair A. Ruble
Notes
Contributors
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Betsy Van der Veer Martens
Cornell University Press
Sage House
512 East State Street
Ithaca, New York 14851-0250
phone: (607) 277-2338 x 256
fax: (607) 277-2397
www.cornellpress.cornell.edu
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Betsy Van der Veer Martens
Cornell University Press
Sage House
512 East State Street
Ithaca, New York 14851-0250
phone: (607) 277-2338 x 256
fax: (607) 277-2397
www.cornellpress.cornell.edu
