Alexandar Mihailovic

Areas of Expertise

Mihailovic has written about a range of subjects, including theology and literary theory, nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian and Ukrainian literature, the criminal subculture in
Russia, cultural relations during the Cold War, popular music, African American studies, art history, music, and cinema studies. In his recent publications, he examines the global rise of the
populist right-wing movements and the current struggle for LGBTQ rights in Russia. He has also translated Russian literature and literary criticism.
His book about the confluence of American and Russian far-right populist movements, Illiberal Vanguard: Populist Elitism in the United States and Russia, was published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 2023. Screening Solidarity Neoliberalism and Transnational Cinemas, the book he co-authored with Patricia A. Simpson and Helga Druxes, was published by Bloomsbury Academic Press that same year.

 

Mihailovic’s other books include Corporeal Words: Mikhail Bakhtin’s Theology of Discourse (Northwestern University Press), the edited volume Tchaikovsky and His Contemporaries: A Centenary Symposium (Greenwood Press) and The Mitki and Art of Postmodern Protest in Russia (University of Wisconsin Press, 2018). The Russian translation of an updated and expanded version of that book came out with the New Literary Review (NLO) Press in Moscow, in the series ‘Studies in Visual Culture’, and was shortlisted for the 2021 Kandinsky Prize in the category of writing about contemporary Russian art.

 

In 2016, together with Helga Druxes and Karolin Machtans, Mihailovic edited the collection Navid Kermani: Contemporary German Writers (Oxford, UK: Peter Lang Oxford), about the Iranian-German fiction writer and respected scholar of Islam who has positioned himself as a forthright critic of xenophobia and the resurgent far-right within Germany.

 

Mihailovic has taught at Williams and Bennington Colleges, Columbia, and Brown. He has received fellowships from the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, and the Oakley Center for Humanities and Social Sciences at Williams College. Mihailovic received his B.A. from Columbia, and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Yale.

Scholarship/Creative Work

Books:
Author: Illiberal Vanguard: Populist Elitism in the United States and Russia. University of Wisconsin Press, 2023 [ISBN 978-0-299-34050 -6]: https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/5830.htm
*Paperback edition release date: October 15, 2024.

Co-author with Helga Druxes and Patricia A. Simpson, Screening Solidarity: Neoliberalism and Transnational Cinemas, Bloomsbury Academic Press: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/screening-solidarity-9798765101438/
*Paperback edition release date: November 26, 2024.

The Mitki and the Art of Postmodern Protest in Russia, University of Wisconsin Press (Paperback edition, 2019): https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/5630.htm

Updated in Russian translation: Митьки и искусство постмодернистского протеста в России. Tr. Nina Stavrogina. Series: Studies in Visual Culture. Moscow: NLO Books [R. Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie (New Literary Review):https://www.nlobooks.ru/books/ocherki_vizualnosti/23068/

Shortlisted for the Kandinsky Prize in 2021, in the category of writing about contemporary Russian art: http://www.kandinsky-prize.ru/ob-yavleny-nominanty-13-j-premii-kandinskogo-2021/

Druxes, Helga, Karolin Machtans and Alexandar Mihailovic, eds. Navid Kermani. Series: Contemporary German Writers and Filmmakers. Oxford, UK: Peter Lang Oxford, 2016.

Tchaikovsky and His Contemporaries: A Centenary Symposium. [Edited volume] Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999. Reprinted by Bloomsbury Academic Press (London, UK), 2022

Corporeal Words: Mikhail Bakhtin’s Theology of Discourse. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1997

Recent Articles:

“Neo-primitivist art/lifestyle. Тhe Association of Independent Experimental Art (TEII) and the Mitki.” Chapter in Mark Lipovetsky, Maria Engstrom, Ilya Kukuj, and Tom Glanc, eds., Oxford Handbook of Soviet Underground Culture. Oxford University Press, 2024: 1007-1028. https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/34707/chapter-abstract/337899904?redirectedFrom=fulltext

“Whither the State? Steve Bannon, the Alt Right, and Lenin’s State and Revolution.” In Ivanchikova, Alla and Robert MacLean, eds. The Future of Lenin: Power, Politics and
Revolution in the Twenty-First Century. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2022: 101-124.

Film Reviews, Blogs, and Interviews:

Review of film Year of Birth (2023), dir. Mikhail Mestetsky. Kinokultura: New Russian Cinema 85 (July 2024): https://www.kinokultura.com/2024/85r-god-rozhdeniia.shtml

Podcast interview with Sean Guillory at “The Eurasian Knot,” about my book Illiberal Vanguard: Populist Elitism in the United States and Russia (June 2024 [*forthcoming]):
https://euraknot.org/category/podcasts/

Interview with Geoff Kabaservice, Niskanen Center. “Illiberal vanguards in Russia and the U.S., with Alexandar Mihailovic (13 February 2024): https://www.niskanencenter.org/illiberal-
vanguards-in-russia-and-the-u-s-with-alexandar-mihailovic/

Review of film Danube (2021), dir. Liubov’ Mul’menko. Kinokultura: New Russian Cinema 76
(April 2022): http://www.kinokultura.com/2022/76r-dunai.shtml

“A Belief in Jest: Anarchic Arts in Postmodern Russia.” University of Wisconsin Press Author’s Blog: https://uwpress.wisc.edu/blog/?p=3301