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Professor Jeremy Hicks

Jeremy

Professor of Russian Culture and Film

Email: j.g.hicks@qmul.ac.uk
Telephone: Email to arrange Teams or Zoom appointment
Room Number: Arts One 1.01
Office Hours: Office Hours: On leave until January 2026

Profile

I received a PhD from SSEES-UCL in 2000, and have been teaching at Queen Mary since 1998 and I became a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in 2016. My research is highly regarded: I received the 2012 US Slavists' (ASEEES) Vucinich prize for the most important contribution to the field. I am the General Editor for the Forum Prize for Forum for Modern Language Studies.

Teaching

  • On leave until January 2026

Research

Research Interests:

  • Soviet and Post-Soviet film about World War Two and the Holocaust
  • Humanitarian Film and the Soviet Famines
  • Soviet and Post-Soviet Documentary Film
  • Soviet literature (1920s-40s)

Examples of research funding:

  • ‘Film and Famine in Russia and Ukraine, 1921-23,’ Leverhulme research fellowship (£65,000) January-December 2025
  • British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant £10,000, July 2021-2023Humanitarian Film and Communist Agitation: Russian and International Films of The Volga Famine 1921- 1923

Publications

Books

The Victory Banner: Cinema, Ritual and Repetition in Russia's Memory of World War Two. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020.

First Films of the Holocaust: Soviet Cinema and the Genocide of the Jews, 1938-46, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012. [Russian version of chapter one, chapter five]

Dziga Vertov: Defining Documentary Film, London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2007.

Mikhail Zoshchenko, The Galosh: Selected Short Stories, London: Angel Books, 2000 [selection, translation, introduction and notes]. [US hardback edition, New York: Overlook Press, 2006; paperback 2009].

Mikhail Zoshchenko and the Poetics of Skaz, Nottingham: Astra Press, 2000.

 

Articles/Chapters

‘Reinventing the Real: Post-Soviet Documentary Cinema of the 1990s,’ Imagining the post-Soviet 1990s: Literature, Art, Performance, Cinema, ed. by Thomas Grob, Tomáš Glanc, Anna Hodel, Gunnar Lenz, London: Routledge 2025, in press, submitted November 2024.

‘The Place of Ukraine in Mark Donskoi’s, The Rainbow (Raduga/ Raiduha, Kyiv and Ashgabat Studios, 1943),’ Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema 18: 3 (2024), 309-326 (Part of special issue with Culture of Ukraine (Kharkiv) on Ukrainian film history)

‘Introduction: Special joint issue of Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema and Culture of Ukraine,’ Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, 18:3 (2024), 251-262

‘Reflections on the Institutions and Sociology of Post-Soviet Independent Russian Documentary Film,’ in Johann Lindbladh and Anja Tippner (eds), Witnessing in Art: Documentary Literature, Film and Theatre in Russia, Eastern Europe and the Baltic States. Vienna: Central European University Press, forthcoming 2024

‘Politics and Social Engagement in Recent Russian Documentary Film,’ in Shpolberg and Anastasia Kostina (eds), Contemporary Russian Documentary: Negotiating the Personal and the Political. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming 2023.

‘Documentary Film and the Volga Famine: Save the Children Fund’s Famine (1922)’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, (online 2023) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01439685.2023.2173377

‘Film as a Source in Soviet History,’ in George Gilbert (ed.), Reading Russian Sources. London: Taylor and Francis/Routledge, 2020, 180-95.

‘Paradise (Andrei Konchalovsky),’ in Rimgayla Salys (ed.), The Russian Cinema Reader: Contemporary Russian Cinema (2005-2016). Brighton: MA, Academic Studies Press, 2019.

‘Aid, Appropriation and Amnesia: Documentary Film and The Arctic Convoys of World War Two,’ in Lilya Kaganovsky, Scott McKenzie and Anna Stenport (eds), Arctic Cinema and the Documentary Ethos. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2019, 114-32.

‘Soviet Journalists at Nuremberg: Establishing the Soviet War Narrative,’ in David M. Crowe (ed.), Satlin's Soviet Justice: ‘Show’ Trials, War Crimes Trials, and Nuremberg. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019, 199-215.

‘Kul´t lichnosti v fil´makh Mikhaila Romma,’ [The Cult of Personality in Mikhail Romm’s Films], International Journal of Cultural Research (Mezhdunarodnyi zhurnal isledovanii kul´tury) 2(3) 2018, 83-91.

‘Was the Left’s Thunder Stolen? Soviet Short Films on British Wartime Screens,’ Connexe, Les espaces postcommunistes en question(s), 3 (2018), 113-32.

‘Bewegte und unbewegte Blicke der Toten: Aus der Warchauer Ghetto und Charkiv,’ in Susi K. Frank (ed.), Bildformeln: Visuelle Erinnerungskulturen in Osteuropa, Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2018, 213-28.

‘A Holy Relic of War: The Soviet Victory Banner as Artefact,’ in Patrick Finney (ed.), Remembering the Second World War, London and New York: Routledge, 2017, 197-216.

‘Appropriating the Presence of History: Raising the Victory Banner over the Reichstag,' Screen, 57:3 (Autumn 2016) 362-70.

'Soiuzdetfil´m Studios, The Birth of Soviet Children’s Film, and the Child Actor', Willey-Blackwell Companion to Russian Cinema Oxford: Willey-Blackwell, 2016.

’Témoins malgré eux’? Les différentes sortes de photographies et d’images filmiques de la Shoah,’ ln Filmer la guerre 1941–1946: Les soviétiques face à la Shoah, Paris: Mémorial de la Shoah, 2015, 123-27.

‘Otrazhenie Kholokosta v sovetskikh dokumental´nykh fil´makh voennogo vremeni I ikh vlianie na pamiat´ o zhertvakh voiny,’ in Il´ia Al´tman, Igor´ Kotler and Jürgen Zarusky (eds), Kholokost 70 spustia. Materialy Mezhdunarodnogo Foruma i 9–i Mezhdunarodnoi konferentsii ‘Uroki Kholokosta I sovremennaia Rossiia, Moscow: Rossiiskaia biblioteka Kholokosta, 2015, 178-82.

‘Back to the Archives: The Testimonial Power of Soviet Silent Footage of the Holocaust,’ in Cinema, State Socialism and Society in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, 1917-1989: Re-Visions,Sanja Bahun and John Haynes (eds), London and New York: Routledge, 2014.

‘Challenging the Voice-of-God in Soviet Documentaries of World War II’ in Lilya Kaganovsky and Maria Salazkina (eds) Sound/ Music/ Speech in Soviet and Post-Soviet Cinema, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014.

‘Dziga Vertov, The Man with the Movie Camera,’ in The Russian Cinema: A Reader, ed. Rimgaila Salys, Brighton, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2013.

 ‘“Soul Destroyers” – Soviet Journalism on the Krasnodar and Kharkov trials,’ History, 98:332 (2013).

‘“Too Gruesome to be Fully Taken in”: Konstantin Simonov’s “The Extermination Camp” As Holocaust Literature,’ Russian Review 72:2, 242–259 (2013).

‘The Dead Never Lie’: Soviet Film, the Shoah, and the Nuremberg Tribunal’ trans. as ‘El juicio de los pueblos: los muertos nunca mienten,’ in Archivos de la filmoteca (Valencia, Spain) 2012. Also translated as: '"Les Morts ne mentent pas": le cinéma soviétique, La Shoah et le procès de Nuremberg,' in Valérie Pozner and Natacha Laurent (eds), Kinojudaica: l’image des Juifs dans le cinéma russe et soviétique des années 1910 aux années 1960, Paris: Nouveau monde, 2012.

 ‘Sokurov’s Documentaries,’ in Birgit Beumers, Nancy Condee (eds) The Cinema of Alexander Sokurov, London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2011.

 ‘From Atrocity to Action: How Soviet Cinema Initiated the Holocaust Film’ in Justice, Politics, and Memory in Europe after the Second World War: Landscapes After Battle, Vol. 2, ed. David Cesarani and Dieter Steinert, Edgware: Vallentine Mitchell, 2011.

‘Confronting the Holocaust: Mark Donskoi’s The Unvanquished,’ Studies in Russian Soviet Cinema 3:1, (2009), 33-51.

‘Lost in Translation? Did Sound Stop Soviet films Finding Foreign Audiences?’, in Stephen Hutchings (ed.), Screening Intercultural Dialogue: Russia and its Other(s) on Film, London: Routledge-Curzon, 2008, 113-29.

‘“Ne Zolotoi lev dolzhen stat´ nastoiashchim priznaniem Tarkovskogo…” (Vospriiatie fil´ma “Ivanovo detstvo” na Venetsianskom kinofestivale,’ [The Reception of Tarkovsky’sIvan’s Childhood at the Venice Film Festival] in  Fenomen Andreia Tarkovskogo v intellektual´noi i khudozhestvennoy kul´ture, ed. Evgenii Tsymbal, Viacheslav Okeanskii, Ivanovo: Talka, 2008, 105-112.

'Worker Correspondents: Between Journalism and Literature,'Russian Review 66 (October 2007), pp. 568-585.

‘From Conduits to Commanders: Shifting Views of Worker Correspondents, 1924-1926,’ Revolutionary Russia, 19:2 (Dec 2006), pp. 131-149.

'The International Reception of Early Soviet Sound Cinema:Chapaev in Britain and America,' Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol. 25, No. 2 (June 2005), pp. 273-89.

'Educating Chapaev: from Document to Myth,' in Stephen Hutchings and Anat Vernitskaia (eds), Screening the Word: Russian and Soviet Film Adaptations of Literature, London: Routledge, 2004.

Supervision

I welcome applications from candidates wishing to undertake doctoral research in the following areas:

Russian and Soviet cinema (especially documentary, Dziga Vertov, wartime and Holocaust cinema)

Memory and trauma in twentieth century Russia (any media)

Russian literature (in particular Mikhail Zoshchenko, non-fiction, journalistic forms)

 

Current PhD students:

Vicki Thornton - 'Pre-mediated, Mediated, Remediated: Site, Cinematic Memory and Reenactment in Documentary & Artists' Film' (second supervisor with Steven Eastwood, Film Studies)

Archie Wolfman - 'Sound design, traumatic memory, and identification in contemporary Holocaust cinema' (second supervisor, with Libby Saxton)

Assiya Issemberdiyeva - 'British Attitudes to Non-Russian Identities in World War Two Campaigns for British Aid to the Soviet Union'

Veselina Dzhumbeva - 'Identity in the works of the Russian émigré author Ekaterina Bakunina'

Darya Lis - ‘Reframing Postcolonial Discourse in East European Studies: The Case Study of the Belarus Collection at the British Library’ (Second supervisor with Natalya Chernysheva)

 

Successfully completed PhD supervisees: 

Katie McElvanney - Female Journalists in the Russian Revolutions and Civil Wars: Case Studies of Ariadna Tyrkova-Williams and Larisa Reisner, 1917-1926

Primary Supervisor for AHRC-funded Collaborative Doctoral Partnership student (with British Library)

Specialist third supervisor for completed PhD at KCL (Russian film and Holocaust) 

Victoria Walden - ‘Experiencing the Holocaust on Screen: Affect, Embodiment and Materiality of Trauma’ (2017)

Anna Hillman - ‘Carnivals of Transition: Cuban and Russian Film (1960-2000)’ (2012)

Public Engagement

Film, TV and radio

  • Interviewed in World War Two in Numbers, dir. Mike Ibeji, WAG TV, Channel 5, September 2019nw
  • Interviewed in Nicholas and Alexandra: The Letters, TVO, Yesterday Channel, May 2018
  • Interviewed in ‘The Tarpaulin – A Biography,’ BBC Radio 4, November 2016
  • Consultant on Imperial War Museums’ restoration of German Concentration Camps Factual Survey, 2015, DVD 2017 link to film of discussion at 2015 BFI premiere.n
  • TV interviews about Soviet-Russian film of the Holocaust for Arise TV, Jan 2015; Sky News, Jan 2014
  • Consultant on documentary Night Will Fall, dir. Andre Singer (Spring Films and Angel TV, shown on Channel 4 October 2014, DVD February 2015).
  • Consultant for documentary film based on my research: The Unseen Holocaust, dir. Mike Ibeji, Formative Productions (screened on History  and H2 channels across Europe, January 2014, DVD August 2014)
  • Interviewed on Russian Book World, ‘The Cinema of Alexander Sokurov,’ Radio Voice of Russia, January 22, 2012
  • Appeared on discussion of Geoff Dyer’s Zona (about Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker), Nightwaves, BBC Radio 3, 21 March 2012
  • Appeared in Russian documentary about wartime film, ‘Na podmostkakh voiny’ (On the Stage of War) directed by Aleksandr Avilov, Kul´tura Russian national TV channel, 4 May 2010
  • Invited to BBC world service (Russian language) discussion of Aleksandr Doroshevich’s book Britanskoe kino za 50 let, Angliiskii klub, 21 October 2008

 

Newspaper and Magazine Publications and Coverage

 

Talks, Panel Discussions and Film Introductions

  • Panel discussion of The Commissar (1967) as part of series studying Jews and the Russian Revolution, at Pears Institute for Study of Antisemitism, April 2018
  • Introduction to public screening of restored Defeat of the German Forces Near Moscow (1942) Volokalamskskii rubezh film festival, Volokalamsk, Moscow region,  November 2017
  • Russian Revolution and Childhood, at Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood, Bethnal Green, London November 2017
  • Maiakovskii and the Russian Revolution, Moffatt Russian Conference, Moffatt, Scotland, October 2017
  • Public discussions about WWII and Russian Revolution, House of Lords, November 2016, March 2017
  • Film introductions including: V&A Museum of Childhood, Austria Film Museum Vienna, Goethe Institute London (May 2015), Curzon Mayfair, Second Home (October 2015), BFI Southbank Russian season, June 2011, Vertov Retrospective at Cambridge Film Festival, July 2005
  • Talks about Russia, WWII, the Holocaust and Russian Cinema to numerous secondary schools (Watford Girls Grammar, Latymer, Kingston Grammar, North London Collegiate College)
  • ‘'Remembering and Recycling Victory: Reusing War Footage in Russian and Soviet Films, 1945-2015'; ‘Meaningful Martyrdom — Death, Revolution and Victory from Lenin to the Reichstag,’ Grad Gallery, March 2016,
  • ‘Propaganda Beyond the Iron Curtain’, British Library, May 2013
  • Interviewed for Voice of Russia, about First Films of the Holocaust, American edition, November 2012; UK edition, January 2013
  • Selected, translated and introduced films at Holocaust Memorial Day event, ‘The Story of the Russians Who Spoke Out,’ Imperial War Museum, London, January 25, 2012
  • Participant at BFI Sokurov Symposium, December 2011
  • Talk about Soviet influence on African film, Gasworks Gallery, London 26 February 2011
  • Public talk, ‘Kak sovetskoe kino Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny otrazhalo Kholokost’ [How Soviet Cinema of the Great Patriotic War reflected the Holocaust], Holocaust Museum, Moscow, 9 September 2010
  • Public talk (Soviet wartime film and the Holocaust) at Pushkin House, London, December 2009
  • Participant at roundtable discussion on Russian documentary cinema, 2nd London Russian Film Festival, September 2008; Interviewed for Vesti (Russian news, Rossiia channel)

 

Other

  • Adult Learning course: ‘Film and the Russian Revolution’ as part of British Library Russian Revolution Exhibition, May 2017
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