Dr Claire McCallum

Senior Lecturer in Twentieth Century Russian History

5064

01392 725064

Overview

My research centres on the social and cultural history of the Soviet Union in the years following the end of the Second World War, with a particular focus on issues related to gender and visual culture. I have published extensively on the impact of the War on the representations of masculinity in official visual culture, which includes groundbreaking work on the evolving image of Soviet fathers, depictions of disability, and the treatment of trauma and grief in Socialist Realism between the end of the War and 1965.

My current project examines the dynamics of the Soviet peace movement after 1945, with a particular emphasis on Soviet engagement with the Global South during this period.

Office Hours & Arrangements:

Tuesdays 11.30-12.30 on Teams - no appointment needed*

Fridays 11.00-12.00 - in person, by appointment only

* For Weeks 10 and 11 my Tuesday office hour will be 12.30-13.30 due to teaching committments

For In Person Meetings: Please click here to book a 15 minute slot

For Teams Meeting: Please click here to join the meeting. If I am with another student you will wait in the virtual lobby until I'm free.

Research

My research to date has been largely focused on Soviet gender ideals and their representation in visual culture, and has looked specifically at the representation of men and idealised masculinity in the two decades following 1945. Here I was primarily interested in discovering the impact of the War on the image of the New Soviet Man, how that image encompassed the war experience, and what might have changed in the years that followed 1945 and especially during the years of Destalinistion. Key themes of this research included examination of the representation of disability and injury, the treatment of death and male grief and trauma, and the evolution of the Soviet father in visual culture after the War and throughout the Khrushchev era, a period traditionally seen as one marked by fatherlessness - both practically and symbolically following the death of Stalin in 1953. This research led to the publication of a number of articles and a book chapter, as well as my monograph, published by Northern Illinois Univeristy Press in 2018

My new research project - which is in its early stages - examines the Soviet peace movement after 1945. By examining the records of state organisations and those who interacted with them; analysing official Soviet culture; and making use of both governmental and non-governmental materials related to Soviet peace activities held in Western Europe and the USA, this research will focus on the multiple manifestations of concern for peace in Soviet society. It will think about how peace was harnessed by the state as a means of mobilising the citizenry, how and why the Soviet people engaged with these ideas of peace and how they negotiated their own desires for a peaceful future within the parameters set by the regime. The internationalist nature of many of these activities will be highlighted here by paying particular attention to the movement of people and consequently ideas across the supposed 'Iron Curtain', which ranged from the exchanges organised by friendship societies and trade unions to more to more unconventional initiatives such as peace cruises.

Ultimately, this project aims to show how the Soviet 'fight for peace' sits at the centre of a complex network of factors that shaped the Cold War period, as peace was at the heart of how many of the key developments of the age, such as decolonisation or the struggles for racial and gender equality, were understood and discussed by both the Soviet state and the people. As such, this research will move beyond thinking about peace as primarily defined by US-USSR relations to also consider Soviet interaction with the decolonising world, paying particular attention to the relationships between Soviet (traditionally Islamic) communities in Central Asia and those in the Global South. By making the Soviet periphery a key part of this analysis, this research will shift the focus away from the traditional East/West binary of the Cold War era to offer a fresh and more globalised vision of the significance of peace for the Soviet state and the Soviet people in the years between the end of World War Two and the collapse of the USSR.

Publications

_{Copyright Notice: Any articles made available for download are for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the copyright holder.}

| 2024 | 2021 | 2020 | 2018 | 2017 | 2015 |

2024

McCallum CE. (2024) The Art and Science of Making the New Man in Early 20th-Century Russia. Ed. Nikolai Krementsov and Yvonne Howell. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. xiv, 280 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. Photographs. $115.00, hard bound, Slavic Review, volume 82, no. 3, pages 846-848, DOI:10.1017/slr.2023.339.

2021

McCallum CE. (2021) Судьба нового человека репрезентация и реконструкция маскулинности в советской визуальной культуре, 1945-1965.

2020

McCallum CE. (2020) ‘A Beautiful Dream, Facing Both the Future and the Past’: Destalinization, Visual Culture and the Fortieth Anniversary of the October Revolution, Revolutionary Russia, volume 33, no. 1, pages 106-140, DOI:10.1080/09546545.2020.1753285.

2018

McCallum C. (2018) The Fate of the New Man: Representing and Reconstructing Masculinity in Soviet Visual Culture, 1945-65, Northern Illinois University Press.

2017

Mccallum C. (2017) Demobilized Veterans in Late Stalinist Leningrad: Soldiers to Civilians, History Reviews of New Books, volume 46, no. 1, pages 17-18, DOI:10.1080/03612759.2017.1364090.
McCallum CE. (2017) Man about the house: Male domesticity and fatherhood in soviet visual satire under Khrushchev, The Palgrave Handbook of Women and Gender in Twentieth-Century Russia and the Soviet Union, 331-347, DOI:10.1057/978-1-137-54905-1_22.

2015

McCallum CE. (2015) Club Red: Vacation Travel and the Soviet Dream, Social History, volume 40, no. 1, pages 130-132, DOI:10.1080/03071022.2014.984406.
McCallum CE. (2015) Scorched by the Fire of War: Masculinity, War Wounds and Disability in Soviet Visual Culture, 1941-65, Slavonic and East European Review.
McCallum CE. (2015) The Return: Post-War Masculinity and the Domestic Space in Stalinist Visual Culture, 1945-53, Russian Review, no. 74.

Teaching

I teach a wide variety of modules related to the history of Russia and the Soviet Union, as well as contributing to many of the department's key modules at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. I have been a member of the Higher Education Academy since 2012.

Modules taught

Biography

I began my studies at the University of York in 1999, completing a BA in History before going on to read for an MA in Modern History and Culture in 2002. After spending some time away from academia, I returned to my studies in February 2007 to begin my PhD in the Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies at the University of Sheffield. Working under the supervision of Professor Susan Reid, my research explored the impact of the Second World War on representations of idealised masculinity in official visual culture in the years between 1945 and 1965. After completing my PhD, I joined the History Department here at Exeter in September 2011.

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