Aleks Kudryashova is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. Her areas of interest include the study of European avant-garde(s) with a particular focus on underrepresented women writers; the intersections between literature, architecture, and visual culture in Germany, Austria, and beyond (from late 19th century to the present); utopian and dystopian narratives; the art of propaganda embedded in 20th and 21st century popular culture; and the legacies of critical theory. Aleks’ work as a teacher has gravitated toward literary, visual, and digital literacy; critical pedagogies; genre-based approaches to teaching; curricular design with an emphasize on social justice and the critique of the power of language. Aleks’ current research focuses on the politics of space, the history of urban imagery and imaginary as well as the broader relationship between architecture, literature, and the visual arts. Her dissertation investigates cinematic approaches to architecture and urban space in divided Berlin in the extended 1980s.

Publications

“Ostalgie for the Present: Peter Kahane’s Die Architekten (1990) and the Futurity of Late Socialism.” Co-authored with Alexander Lambrow. Forthcoming in Unrealized Futures: Post-Socialist Memory in German-speaking Literature and Culture, edited by Michel Mallet, Maria Mayr, and Kristin Rebien (De Gruyter).

“Brecht, Bildung, and the Search for Epic Architecture.” Forthcoming in Karl-Marx-Hof: Schlüsselbau der Moderne (2020).

Chapters “Urban Planning” (co-authored with Werner Schwarz), “Architecture” (co-authored with Georg Vasold), “Interior Design.” The Red Vienna Sourcebook, edited by Rob McFarland, Georg Spitaler, Ingo Zechner (Camden House, 2020).

Chapters “Stadtplanung” (co-authored with Werner Schwarz), “Architektur” (co-authored with Georg Vasold), “Wohnen.” Das Rote Wien. Schlüsseltexte der Zweiten Wiener Moderne, 1919-1934, edited by Rob McFarland, Georg Spitaler, Ingo Zechner (De Gruyter, 2020).

“The Ecstasies of Mela Hartwig-Spira: Between Laughter and Terror.” Forthcoming in Women in German Expressionism: Gender, Sexuality, Activism, ed. by Anke Finger and Julie Shoults (womeningermanexpressionism.com).

“Concrete Dreams: Architecture and Space in late GDR Film.” THRESHOLDS 46: Scatter! (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2018).

“Wertewelten.” Normen, Standards, Werte – was die Welt zusammenhält, Schriftenreihe Wertewelten, edited by Assmann, Baasner, Wertheimer, Vol. 3. (Baden-Baden, 2011), 207-209.