The Life Cycle of Russian Things: From Fish Guts to Fabergé, 1600 - Present

ISBN 10: 1350186066 / ISBN 13: 9781350186064

Published by BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC, 2023

About this Item

Brings together an eclectic mix of established scholars in various disciplines from across the United States, Canada, Kazakhstan and Germany.

Seller Inventory # 611229703

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Life Cycle of Russian Things: From Fish Guts to Fabergé, 1600 - Present
• Publisher: BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
• Publication Date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1350186066
• ISBN 13: 9781350186064
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

The Life Cycle of Russian Things re-orients commodity studies using interdisciplinary and comparative methods to foreground unique Russian and Soviet materials as varied as apothecary wares, isinglass, limestone and tanks. It also transforms modernist and Western interpretations of the material by emphasizing the commonalities of the Russian experience. Expert contributors from across the United States, Canada, Britain, and Germany come together to situate Russian material culture studies at an interdisciplinary crossroads. Drawing upon theory from anthropology, history, and literary and museum studies, the volume presents a complex narrative, not only in terms of material consumption but also in terms of production and the secondary life of inheritance, preservation, or even destruction. In doing so, the book reconceptualises material culture as a lived experience of sensory interaction. The Life Cycle of Russian Things sheds new light on economic history and consumption studies by reflecting the diversity of Russia’s experiences over the last 400 years.

About the Authors

Matthew P. Romaniello is Assistant Professor of History at Weber State University, USA. He is the author is the author of Enterprising Empires: Russia and Britain in Eighteenth-Century Eurasia (2019) and The Elusive Empire: Kazan and the Creation of Russia, 1552-1671 (2012). He is also the editor of The Journal of World History and five edited volumes, including two with Tricia Starks. He is currently writing Humoring Russia: Body Politics in the Eighteenth Century.

Alison K. Smith is Chair and Professor of History at the University of Toronto, Canada. She is the author of For the Common Good and Their Own Well-Being: Social Estates in Imperial Russia (2014) and Recipes for Russia: Food and Nationhood under the Tsars (2008).

Tricia Starks is Professor of History at the University of Arkansas, USA. She is the author of Cigarettes and Soviets (2022), Smoking under the Tsars (2018) and The Body Soviet: Propaganda, Hygiene and the Revolutionary State (2008). She is also the co-editor, along with Matthew P. Romaniello, of Tobacco in Russian History and Culture: From the Seventeenth Century to the Present (2009).