Erika Wolf

Contact Details

Room 2N11, Arts (Burns) building

Tel 64 3 479 9012
Email erika.wolf@otago.ac.nz
Office Hours: by appointment
Teaching: ARTH 115, ARTH 116, ARTH 221, ARTH 225, ARTH 323, ARTH 324, ARTH 423, ARTH 424

Academic Qualifications

1985: AB (Cum Laude) (Sociology) Princeton University
1990: AM (History of Art) University of Michigan
1996: AM (Russian & Eastern European Studies) University of Michigan
1999: PhD (History of Art) University of Michigan

Research Interests

Dr Wolf's primary field of research is Soviet art and visual culture. She is presently completing the manuscript for USSR in Construction: A Modernist Propaganda Magazine for the Stalinist Regime. This book examines the persistence, modification and transformation of Soviet avant-garde representational practices in light of the emerging Stalinist aesthetic of Socialist Realism in the 1930s through a study of the Soviet photographic magazine USSR in Construction. Other areas of research interest include: Soviet photographic debates of the 1920s and 1930s, the visual culture of Soviet prison camps, Soviet writer-photographers, the proletarian photography movement, and Soviet cultural exchange. Since arriving at Otago, she has also begun to pursue research on both historic and contemporary New Zealand photography.

Select Publications

• Co-editor, Aleksandr Deineka (1899-1969): Avant-Garde for the Proletariat (Madrid: Fundacion Juan March, in press). Contribution to volume includes translations of 38 primary source texts from Russian to English.
• Koretsky: The Soviet Photo Poster, 1930-1984 (New York: The New Press, in press).
• Erika Wolf and Angela Wanhalla, eds. Early New Zealand Photography: Images and Essays, 1839-1918 [a collection of essays on early New Zealand photographs by scholars from diverse disciplines intended to facilitate research and interdisciplinary undergraduate teaching on the history of photography]. (Dunedin: Otago University Press, in press).
• "The Eiffel Towers in Dunedin: Stereo Photography and Modernity at the New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition (1889-1890)." Essay for the above anthology (in press).
• "The Soviet Union: From Worker to Proletarian Photography" and " "As at the Filippovs": The Foreign Origins of the Soviet Narrative Photographic Essay." In The Worker Photography Movement [1926-1939]: Essays and documents, edited by Jorge Ribalta, 32-46, 124-130. Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arta Reina Sofia, 2011.
• Translations from Russian and German of primary source documents related to the international worker photography. The Worker Photography Movement [1926-1939]: Essays and documents. Edited by Jorge Ribalta, 51-69, 131-161. Madrid: Museo Nacional Centro de Arta Reina Sofia, 2011.
• "The Author as Photographer: Tret'iakov's, Erenburg’s, and Il'f’s Images of the West." Configurations 18, no. 3 (Fall 2010): 383-403.
• "Shigeyuki Kihara's Fa'a fafine; In a Manner of a Woman: The Photographic Theater of Cross-Cultural Encounter." Pacific Arts 10, no. 2 (2010): 23-33.
• "Belomorstroi: The Visual Economy of Forced Labor." In Picturing Russia: Essays on Visual Evidence. Edited by Valerie Kivelson and Joan Neuberger, 168-174. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.
• Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov. Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip: The 1935 Travelogue of Two Soviet Writers. Edited by Erika Wolf. English edition of historic Soviet photo series from 1936. With introductory essays and annotations. Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006.
• "SSSR na stroike: The Magazine and Its Reader" [in Russian]. In SSSR na stroike: Zhurnal novogo tipa [USSR in Construction: A Magazine of a New Type]. Edited by Egor Larichev, 11-25. Moscow: Agey Tomesh, 2006.
• "SSSR na stroike: From Constructivist Visions to Construction Sites." In USSR in Construction: An Illustrated Exhibition Magazine, ed. Petter Osterlund, n.p. Fotomuseet Sundsvall, Sundsvall, Sweden, 2006.
• Editor and proof-reader for English edition of Art-Guide: Köenigsberg-Kaliningrad Now. Kaliningrad, Russia: National Centre for Contemporary Art, 2005.
• "Kant's Brides: A Readymade photographic chronotope." In Art-Guide: Königsberg-Kaliningrad Now, 108. Kaliningrad, Russia: National Centre for Contemporary Art, 2005.
• "The Context of Soviet Photojournalism, 1923-1932." The Zimmerli Journal 2 (Fall 2004): 106-117.
• "When Photographs Speak, to Whom Do They Talk? The Origins and Audience of SSSR na stroike (USSR in Construction)." Left History 6, no. 2 (2000): 53-82.

Recent Conference Papers and Presentations

• “Fiona Pardington’s Eight Shells: Reclamation of Te Ao Maori from Museum Collections.” The Art Association of Australia and New Zealand Annual Conference, Wellington, 7-9 December 2011.
• “From Klucis to Koretsky: From Modernist Photomontage to the Socialist Realist Photo Poster.” Australia-New Zealand Slavic Association Annual Conference, Christchurch, 7-8 November 2011.
• "AES+F's Last Riot: Bloodless Violence in a Virtual World", Annual Meeting of the Association for Slavic, Eastern European and Eurasian Studies, Los Angeles, California, 20 November 2010.
• "Amateur Worker Photography and the Development of Soviet Law Under Stalin," Art and Law Symposium sponsored by the Faculty of Law, University of Otago and the Dunedin School of Art, Otago Polytechnic, Dunedin, 29 October 2010.
• "Performing Photography in Shigeyuki Kihara's Taualuga: The Last Dance." Dancing Across the Disciplines: Cross Currents of Dance Research and Performance Through the Global Compass, University of Otago, Dunedin, 28 June 2010.
• "The Kol'tsov Konzern and Soviet Proletarian Photography." Invited paper for the conference "The Worker-Photography Movement: Towards a political history of the origins of photographic modernism." Museum Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain, 21-23 January 2010.
• "Semyon Fridlyand in Context: The Politics of Soviet Photography in Print." Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advacement of Slavic Studies, Boston, Massachusetts, 13 November 2009.
• "From USSR in Construction to Soviet Union: The Central Committee responds to the propaganda magazine Amerika." Russian Studies Research Cluster Symposium "Conduits of Exchange and Contact," University of Otago, Dunedin, 3 April 2009.
• "The Author as Photographer: Soviet Writers and the Camera." Poetics of the tool: Technologies, Figures and Instruments of Literature, conference at Freie Üniversitat, Berlin, Germany, 17-18 October 2008.
• "From Belly to Brain: Conceptualizing the photographic image through the Leica." Fourth Fitzwilliam Colloquium on Russian History and Culture, Cambridge, England, 27-29 August 2008.
• "Sources of Russian and Soviet Visual Cultures, 1860-1935: Study, Teaching, and Education." Participant in National Endowment for the Humanities workshop. New York Public Library, 21 June -12 July 2008.
• "Aleksandr Lemberg's Belomorsko-Baltiiskii Vodnyi Put'." Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, New Orleans, Louisiana, 18 November 2007.
• "Gulag Icons: Photographs of the White Sea Canal Forced Labor Camp." Annual Meeting of the College Art Association, Atlanta, Georgia, 17 February 2005.

Areas of Research Supervision

Modern and contemporary European and American art, the intersections of art and politics; alternative media, the history of photography (including New Zealand), and methodology.

Editorial Responsibilities

• Member of editorial board of: Photographies [Routledge].
• Iconography Editor, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History.

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