Matthew Kendall, PhD
Assistant Professor
Polish, Russian, and Lithuanian Studies
Pronouns: He/Him/His
Contact
Building & Room:
1602 UH
Address:
601 S. Morgan St.
Office Phone:
Email:
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About
Research & Teaching Interests:
Film & Media history and theory; Russian and Soviet literature; Documentary modes; Sound studies; Gender and sexuality in Soviet space
Selected Publications
Books
Revolutions per Minute: Sound Recording and the Soviet Creative Imagination (under review)
Articles
“Always Almost: Nina Agadzhanova and the Ambivalent Archive of Early Soviet Cinema” Forthcoming, Slavic and East European Journal, Fall 2025 (69.3)
“Room for Noise in Soviet Sound Recording” Slavic Review, Volume 82, Issue 4, Winter 2023, pp. 865-873 (link)
“Introduction” to Soviet Sound Worlds Critical Discussion Forum (w/ Gabrielle Cornish). Slavic Review, Volume 82, Issue 4, Winter 2023, pp. 859-864 (link)
“Reading” Pathologic 2: Russian Literature as a Trans-Medial Idea” Slavic Literature, Vol 138–139 (2023), pp. 193-215 (link)
“Boisterous Utopia: Soviet Sonic Culture and Dziga Vertov’s Enthusiasm” Russian Review 81:3 (July 2022), pp. 528-548 (link)
“Stereoscopic Realism: Aleksandr Andrievskii’s Engineers of Illusion” [Стереоскопический реализм: Инженеры иллюзий Александра Андриевского] in Non-standard: Forgotten Experiments in Russian Culture, 1934-64 [НестандАрт: Забытые эксперименты в русской культуре, 1934-64], pp. 79-93. Moscow: NLO, 2021.
Reviews
Film Review: Svetlana Samoshina, The Edge of the Broken Moon (2022), in KinoKultura #83 (April 2024) (link)
Review of Recording Russia: Trying to Listen in the 19th Century (Gabriella Safran, Cornell UP, 2022) in Russian Review 82:2 (April 2023), pp. 327-328 (link)
Review of Arctic Cinemas and the Documentary Ethos (Indiana UP, 2019) in Slavic and East European Journal 64(3): pp.546-547, Fall 2020 (link)
Education
Ph.D., Slavic Languages and Literatures - University of California, Berkeley, (2019)
M.A., Slavic Languages and Literatures - University of California, Berkeley, (2014)
B.A., Russian - Reed College, (2010)
Research Currently in Progress
I have recently completed a book-length project, Revolutions per Minute, which offers a cultural history of sound recording throughout the first half of the Soviet Union. The book explores sound recording’s impact on literary and cinematic production between 1917 and 1965, roughly fifty years that start with the domestic production of Soviet records and end with their eventual displacement by foreign formats and digital techniques. By analyzing popular Soviet literature and films in tandem with voice memos, ethnographic field recordings, listener surveys, and sound recording trade journals, my book approaches and presents sound recording as a legible and important piece of Soviet modernity for the first time. Revolutions per Minute thus expands the boundaries of analysis for Soviet literature and cinema, and it offers a new account for the intersection of art and technology in the Soviet Union.
My future projects taking shape focus on the history of Soviet concepts of waste, the development of post-Soviet disaster cinema, and a broader project on the politically progressive, 19th century Russian realist writings of Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin.