Dr. Aleksandra Kudriashova

Professional Background

Aleks Kudriashova received her PhD from the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University for her dissertation “The Art of Overcoming the Wall: Cinematic Reflections on the Berlin Border.” She is a film, art, architecture, German language, and literature scholar, focusing on the politics of space, violence, architecture, propaganda, mass media, and popular culture. Prior to her doctoral studies, Dr. Kudriashova earned her master's degree in literary and cultural studies from the University of Groningen and her bachelor's degree in philology from Moscow State Lomonosov University.

Dr. Kudriashova also works for the German Studies Program at Bard College Berlin and teaches at the Middlebury College German Language School. Additionally, she coordinates the SPARK for German program, a collaborative project of the American Association of Teachers of German and the Goethe-Institute Washington, which aims to train and support future German language, literature, and culture instructors. Dr. Kudriashova has published and co-authored several articles and book chapters on German Expressionism, East German cinema, filmic architecture, and Red Vienna.

Fellowship Research

Dr. Kudriashova was awarded the Sosland Foundation Fellowship to conduct research for her book project, “Mass Conceptions: The Holocaust and the Iconology of Crowd Design.” Her project investigates the problematic iconology and visual history of crowd representation in film and photography, among other cultural artifacts, in the context of Nazi rule and the Holocaust. Examining how images of massed human potential have profoundly influenced how we perceive ourselves and others, Dr. Kudriashova examines the power involved in their construction, the intent behind them, and their vocabulary. This analysis includes what such images reveal and conceal and the impact on the individual when subsumed by a uniform plurality. With few publications addressing the iconology of masses, crowds, and other forms of collective formation and their power to structure public discourses and media coverage, Dr. Kudriashova examines the gendered language employed to describe representations of ‘the masses’ in visual media. Most importantly, her research delves into crowd designs' visual semantics, aesthetics, and rhetoric and their wide-ranging epistemological, political, and social consequences. 

This fellowship allows Dr. Kudriashova access to materials about the representation of ‘the masses’ from the early 1930s to 1945. Her project is primarily invested in the exploration of records and artifacts that display resistant strategies countering any perception of ‘the masses’ as passive, uniform, or unaware of the cinematic/photographic apparatus that beholds them, including the Allied records of Holocaust survivors and victims, especially materials that have not received adequate attention, in part due to their traumatic resonance. As a teacher and pedagogue, Dr. Kudriashova is particularly interested in USHMM’s approach to curating and presenting images, records, and artifacts that display crowds and groups of people. What strategies do curators employ to avoid replicating the gaze of the perpetrators? Which approaches to visual literacy help visitors understand and interpret images of crowds and the Holocaust? And how have the political and academic discourses surrounding ethnic, gender, class, and other markers informed and (re)shaped USHMM’s educational programs, exhibition practices, and its mission to “inspire[e] citizens and leaders worldwide to confront hatred, prevent genocide, and promote human dignity”?

Residency Period: September 1, 2024 – February 28, 2025