Maria Salazkina

Ms. Salazkina's dissertation addresses the cultural history of Mexico and the Soviet Union in the 1920's - 1930's. She will examine how the emerging post-revolutionary culture of the two countries was mutually re-defined through contacts between Mexican and Soviet artists, intellectuals, and political and public figures, focusing on how they negotiated the tension between continuity and rupture as two conflicting modes of narrative representations of history, and the tension between nationalism and Marxist ideology. With her work Ms. Salazkina hopes to demonstrate the trans-national and global nature of modern cultural and social life in such distant geographical locations as Mexico and Russia, permeated with similar concerns, affected by shared economic processes and political events, and often influenced by common ideological sources.