Professor Kevin Bartig

IAS Fellow at Van Mildert College, January-March 2024

Contact Details

• Home Institution email: kmbartig@msu.edu
• Durham email: kevin.bartig@durham.ac.uk
• Durham Tel: +44 (0) 191 33 44689

Kevin Bartig is Professor of Musicology at Michigan State University. His current research focuses on discourses of arts criticism, arts censorship, and music in transnational networks, particularly in Eastern Europe from the early twentieth century through the early Cold War. His published work has contributed to music, film, and theatre studies, beginning with his first monograph, Composing for the Red Screen: Prokofiev and Soviet Film (Oxford Univ. Press, 2013). The book draws on extensive research in Russian archives to examine Sergei Prokofiev’s collaborations with leading figures in the early history of cinema—among them the pioneering director Sergei Eisenstein. His second book, Sergei Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky (Oxford Univ. Press, 2017), further explores these creative figures’ encounters with Soviet censorship and the reception of their work during the Cold War and beyond. His most recent book is the edited volume Three Loves for Three Oranges: Gozzi, Meyerhold, Prokofiev (Indiana Univ. Press, 2021), which brings together scholars from Theater History, Art History, Musicology, Italian Studies, and Slavic Studies to examine the influence of the eighteenth-century Venetian playwright Carlo Gozzi on key modernist developments in twentieth-century Russian theatre and opera. 

At Durham, Professor Bartig will pursue research on a cultural history of American-Soviet musical exchange from the 1890s through the early Cold War that highlights the role of individual agency in cultural exchange and transnational networks. Professor Bartig will also engage with the Durham-led interdisciplinary project, Understanding Offence, and be in close collaboration with Professor Patrick Zuk from Durham’s School of Modern Languages & Literatures. He will also use the IAS fellowship as an opportunity to engage with colleagues in Music, Russian Studies, History, and Durham’s Centre for Visual Arts and Cultures. 

Professor Bartig’s research has been supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the U.S. Department of Education. During 2011-12 he was a fellow at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. Bartig also serves as editor of the Oxford University Press Keynotes Series.

Events

IAS Seminar - 12 February 2024 - 1.00 - 2.00pm. IAS Seminar Room, Cosin's Hall, Institute of Advanced Study
How the European Symphony Orchestra Became a Radical Soviet Experiment
Registration is essential. Registration form here. 

IAS public lecture - 24 January 2024 - 5.30 - 6.30pm, Ustinov Room, Van Mildert College, Durham University
Soviet Music under Western Eyes: interwar musical tourism and the shaping of modern music
Further information here.