The Oxford Handbook of Communist Visual Cultures Oxford Handbooks Series

Stereotypes often cast communism as a defunct, bankrupt ideology and a relic of the distant past. However, recent political movements like Europe's anti-austerity protests, the Arab Spring, and Occupy Wall Street suggest that communism is still very much relevant and may even hold the key to a new, idealized future. In The Oxford Handbook of Communist Visual Cultures, contributors trace the legacies of communist ideology in visual culture, from buildings and monuments, murals and sculpture, to recycling campaigns and wall newspapers, all of which work to make communism's ideas and values material. Contributors work to resist the widespread demonization of communism, demystifying its ideals and suggesting that it has visually shaped the modern world in undeniable and complex ways. Together, contributors answer curcial questions like: What can be salvaged and reused from past communist experiments? How has communism impacted the cultures of late capitalism? And how have histories of communism left behind visual traces of potential utopias? An interdisciplinary look at the cultural currency of communism today, The Oxford Handbook of Communist Visual Cultures demonstrates the value of revisiting the practices of the past to form a better vision of the future.

Aga Skrodzka is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at Clemson University, where she spearheaded the creation of the World Cinema Program. She is the author of Magic Realist Cinema in East Central Europe and a forthcoming book on the figure of the sex slave in visual culture. Xiaoning Lu is Lecturer in East Asian Languages & Cultures at SOAS, University of London. Her research, which focuses on Chinese socialist cinema and culture, has appeared in journals and edited collections including the Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Journal of Contemporary China, Maoist Laughter, and Words and Their Stories: Essays on Chinese Revolutionary Discourse. Katarzyna Marciniak is Professor of Transnational Studies at Ohio University, where she specializes in the discourses of immigration and foreignness. She is the author of Streets of Crocodiles: Photography, Media, and Postsocialist Landscapes in Poland and co-editor of Teaching Transnational Cinema: Politics and Pedagogy and Transnational Feminism in Film and Media.