Professor Craig Brandist

BA (CCAT), MA, Dphil (Sussex), Professor of Cultural Theory and Intellectual History

Contact details

Telephone: +44 (0)114 222 7413

Email : c.s.brandist@sheffield.ac.uk

Biography

I began work on Russian Cultural Theory as a graduate student in the late 1980s. After completing my doctorate, which included a considerable amount of time and research in Russia, I spent a period as Max Hayward Research Fellow at St Antony´s College, Oxford.

I joined the department at Sheffield in January 1997, originally as a Research Fellow working on a project to uncover the intellectual sources of the ideas of the Bakhtin Circle. Since 2003 I have directed the AHRC-funded project The Rise of Sociological Linguistics in the Soviet Union, 1917–1938: Institutions, Ideas and Agendas.

I am also a member of the Sheffield UCU organising committee.

Research interests

My research is currently focused on the intellectual environment in the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s, with particular reference to emerging theories of language and culture at that time.

I am particularly interested in the interaction between Marxism, phenomenology, Gestalt Theory and various forms of linguistic and cultural theory within the specific context of early-Soviet Russia. Some of the figures with whom my research engages at present include Lev Vygotskii and his Circle, the Bakhtin Circle, N.Ia. Marr, I.G. Frank-Kamenetskii, O.M. Freidenberg, K.R. Megrelidze. Isaak Shpil´rein and Lev Iakubinskii.

However, I am also interested in the changing institutional contexts within which these figures worked and the way in which the shaped the development of the fields to which they contributed.

Recent publications

• (with Katya Chown, ed.) Politics and the Theory of Language in the USSR 1917-1938: The Birth of Sociological Linguistics (London: Anthem Press, 2010, 2011)
• ‘The Place of ILIaZV in the Developement of the Ideas of the Bakhtin Circle’, in Vasilii Shchukin (ed.) Bakhtin, Evropa, vek dvadtsatyi. Sbornik statei, Cracow: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellonskiego, 2006, pp. 73-84.
• ‘The Rise of Soviet Sociolinguistics from the Ashes of Völkerpsychologie’, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 42(3) 2006, pp. 261-77.
• ‘Neobkhodimost´ intellektual´noi istorii’ [The necessity of intellectual history], Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 79 (3) 2006, pp. 56-68.
• ‘Voloshinov’s Dilemma: on the Philosophical Sources of the Bakhtinian Theory of Dialogue and the Utterance’, in Craig Brandist, David Shepherd and Galin Tihanov (eds.) The Bakhtin Circle: In the Master’s Absence (Manchester: Manchester University press, 2004), pp. 97-124.
• ‘The Origins of Soviet Sociolinguistics’, Journal of Sociolinguistics 7(2), 2003, pp. 213-31.
• The Bakhtin Circle: Philosophy, Culture and Politics. (London: Pluto Press, 2002).

Recent lectures, papers etc.

• ‘Bakhtin’s Polyphonic Novel and the simulation of Democracy’. Keynote address to Literature, Culture, and Tolerance Conference, University of Łodz, Łodz, Poland, May 2007.
• ‘Agitation, Propaganda and the Theory of Language in Early Soviet Russia’, The Second International Conference on Multicultural Discourses, Institute of Discourse and Cultural Studies, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China April 2007.
• ‘Psychology, Linguistics and the Rise of Applied Social Science in the USSR: The Case of Isaak Shpil´rein’s Iazyk krasnoarmeitsa’,  University of Sheffield, September 2006.
• Problems of Science and Ideology in the History of Early Soviet Sociolinguistics’, Research seminar, Dept. of Ethnography, European University St. Petersburg, Russia, April 2006.
• ‘Filosofskie istochniki idei V.N. Voloshinova’ [The Philosophical sources of the ideas of V.N. Voloshinov], Research Seminar, Department of General Linguistics, St. Petersburg State University, April 2006.
• ‘The Bakhtin Circle and Research on Language and Literature in Leningrad Institutions: the view from the archives’, keynote address, XII International Bakhtin Conference, Jyväskyklä, Finland, July 2005.

Research students currently supervised

• Julia Allison
• Daniel Bird
• Elisa Camagni
• Alun Thomas
• Ming-Hui Huang

Teaching

• MDL103 Introduction to European Cinema
• MDL6001 Research Methods for Modern Languages
• MDL6002 Dissertation Support
• RUS117 The Soviet Union 1919-1991
• RUS312 Politics and Culture in the USSR 1917-38
• RUS6700 Critical Theory I
• RUS6710 Critical Theory II
• RUS6400 The Bakhtin Circle and Aspects of Russian Theory