Picturing Russian Empire

Picturing Russian Empire is a wonderfully original volume that is a welcome addition to the pedagogical tools we use to introduce students to Russia's empires. The book's paramount advantage lies in its much-needed presentation of tangible artifacts that bring ostensibly distant, perhaps abstract, topics closer to the students. This visual representation of Russian history enables students to appreciate, understand, and critique the narratives they have grown accustomed to analyzing from printed sources"- Stephen Riegg, Texas A&M University
Picturing Russian Empire's strengths include innovative ways of thinking about Russian/Eurasian history and its breadth of coverage and scholarship. The text is comprehensive and accessible, with helpful discussions about how to analyze visual sources in historical research."- Shoshana Keller, Hamilton College
This is a uniquely comprehensive and rich survey of more than a millennium of Russian history that makes use of visual images and their explication by expert specialists to give students and other readers a compelling perspective on the richness and complexity of that country's society and its experiences. While it would serve as an excellent complement to any existing textbook, it can serve as a text in its own right, by prompting discussion that the instructor can use to expand on or situate critical junctures or interpretative questions in Russian history."- David McDonald, University of Wisconsin-Madison
This is a rich, multi-faceted overview of the visual, non-verbal traditions and representations of the Russian empire, starting from the Kievan Rus', ending with the current realities of the Russian Federation. Taken together, the chapters explore the issues of identity, power, homogeneity, agency, reality, and perceptions in an accessible, yet thoroughly analytical way."- Natalie Bayer, Drake University
Picturing Russian Empire offers more than fifty essays written by scholars of history, film, literature, and art that together offer a guided visual tour of the peoples, landscapes, dilemmas, relationships, representations, and worlds of Russia's empires.