Natalie Ryabchikova

Education & Training

  • Ph.D., Film Studies with a concentration in Slavic, University of Pittsburgh, 2016
  • MA, Slavic Languages and Literatuers, University of Pittsburgh, 2012
  • BA, Film Studies, Russian State University of Cinematography (VGIK), 2008

Courses Taught

  • Forbidden Love on Page and Screen
  • Russian Short Story in Context
  • Elementary Russian 2
  • Intermediate Russian 1
  • Advanced Russian 2

Representative Publications

Eisenshtein na bumage [Eisenstein on Paper]. Russian translation, the editor of the Russian version. London/Moscow: Thames & Hudson/Ad Marginem Press, 2017 (forthcoming). (In Russian.)

“Sergei Eisenstein as Modernist” Special Issue, Guest editor, Critical Quarterly 59.1 (April 2017).

“Poetika i politika sikvela v rannem sovetskom kino: ‘Krasnye d'iavoliata’ Ivana Perestiani” i ego prodolzheniia [“The poetics and politics of sequels in early Soviet cinema: The Red Imps by Ivan Perestiani and its sequels”]. Kul'tura i iskusstvo 4 (2017): 72–79. (In Russian.)

Eizenshtein, Sergei. Metod. Raboty to teorii kino [Eisenstein, Sergei. Method. Film Theory Texts]. Edited with an introduction by Natalia Ryabchikova. Moscow: Akademicheskii Proekt, 2016. (In Russian.)

“Sergei Eisenstein and the Soviet Models for the Study of Cinema, 1920s–1940s” (co-authored with Masha Salazkina). Sergei M. Eisenstein. Notes for a General History of Cinema. Ed. Naum Kleiman and Antonio Somaini. Amsterdam: Amsterdam UP, 2016. 405–414.

“Eisenstein’s first auto/biography.” Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema 9.2 (2015): 74–93.

Research Interests

  • Soviet cinema of the 1920s-30s
  • Film historiography
  • Theoretical and artistic legacy of Sergei Eisenstein

Representative Conference Presentations

“The Lures and Dangers of Co-Production: Aesthetics vs. Politics in the 1920s.” ASEEES Annual Convention, Washington, DC. 17–20 November 2016.

“Creation through Appropriation: Soviet Editing Bureaus of the 1920s.” SCMS Annual Conference, Atlanta, GA. 30 March – 3 April 2016.

“O! When! When! When? … When Shall I Go to China, to Japan??!!!”: Sergei Eisenstein and Dreams of the Far East, 1929–32.” ASEEES Annual Convention, Philadelphia, PA. 22 November 2015.

“Eisenstein in England.” Pitt—Birkbeck “Cinema and the City” Summer Workshop (BIMI London). 6–8 May 2015.

"Sergei Eisenstein’s Views on Modernism and Socialist Realism: the 1930s." SCMS Annual Conference, Seattle, WA. 20 March 2014.

“Ivan the Terrible as Detective.” Fields of Vision: Observation, Surveillance, Voyeurism. Graduate Students Conference, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 22 February 2014.

“Soviet Cinephiles: Film Production vs. Film Appreciation in the 1920s.” AATSEEL Annual Conference, Chicago, IL. 10 January 2014. 

“The First Attempt at Nationalization of Soviet Cinema and Its Place in Soviet Film History.” SCMS Annual Conference, Chicago, IL. 6 March 2013.

“The Enemy Within: Espionage and Family Melodrama of the 1930s.” ASEEES National Convention, New Orleans, LA. 16 November 2012.

“From Vampire to Class Enemy: A Soviet Adaptation of Prosper Mérimée’s ‘Lokis’.” SCMS Annual Conference, Boston, MA. 22 March 2012.

“Kar'era i fil'my Konstantina Eggerta” [The Career and Films of Konstantin Eggert]. Presented at the conference “Mezhrabpomfi'm i nemetsko-rossiiskie kul'turnye sviazi v sfere kinematografa v 1920-30-e gody” [Mezhrabpomfil'm and the German-Russian Cinema Connections in the 1920s-1930s], Moscow, Russia. 19 March 2011.

Dissertation Title and Year

The Flying Fish: Sergei Eisenstein Abroad, 1929–1932, 2016