Philip Gleissner specializes in the cultures and literatures of socialist Eastern Europe, with an emphasis on print media in the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and the GDR. He is particularly interested in media as agents of mobility: mechanisms that facilitate the transnational circulation of cultural forms within and beyond Eastern Europe.

Dr. Gleissner is currently finishing his first monograph titled Soviet Circulations: A History of the Socialist Literary Journal. It shows how under the umbrella of state socialism a fragmented cultural field was organized by literary magazines. The book traces how these periodicals moderated multidirectional networks that connected the cultures of the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and the West.

Other current research projects include the edited volumes Red Migrations: Marxism and Mobility after 1917 (with Bradley Gorski, Georgetown; forthcoming with Toronto UP) and Lockdown in the Kitchen: American Immigrant Foodways in Times of Crisis (with Harry Kashdan, Penn; forthcoming with Rutgers UP).

Professor Gleissner’s research relies on digital humanities methodology as a tool for the critical exploration of culture for the project Soviet Journals Reconnected. His current project Kvir_Izdat is an attempt to rethink digital humanities from a queer perspective.

Books:

• Michael Wachtel and Philip Gleissner (eds.), Vjačeslav Ivanov und seine deutschsprachigen Verleger: Eine Chronik in Briefen. [Viacheslav Ivanov and His German-Language Publishers. A Chronicle of Correspondence.] Russian Culture in Europe. Wien: Peter Lang, 2019.

Book projects in progress:

• Soviet Circulations: A History of the Socialist Literary Journal. (monograph)
• Red Migrations: Marxism and Transnational Mobility after 1917. (edited volume, academic; with Bradley Gorski; under contract with Toronto University Press)
• Lockdown in the Kitchen: American Immigrant Foodways in Times of Crisis. (edited volume, trade; with Harry Kashdan; under contract with Rutgers University Press)

Articles and book chapters:

• “Desiring the USSR: Writers from Two Germanies in the Soviet Contact Zone.” (book chapter in Red Migrations volume, forthcoming 2023)
• “‘Somehow, I Wasn’t Drawn into the Editorial Office of Novyi Mir’: Digital Approaches to the Literary Environment of Late Socialist Journals.” Russian Literature 122-123 (2021), pp. 163-191.
• “Bibliografinen data ja tekstien liikkeet rautaesiripun läpi [Bibliographical Data and the Migration of Texts Through the Iron Curtain].” Idäntutkimus. The Finnish Review of East European Studies 26.3 (2019), pp. 77-90.
• “Soviet Union on the Seine: Kontinent, Sintaksis, and the Social Life of Émigré Journals.” Russian Review 77. 3 (2018), pp. 446 -469.
• “Periodical Studies: Why and How to Re-read East European Journals.” ASEEES NewsNet 56.1 (2016), pp. 11-12. (co-authored with Natalia Ermolaev)
• “‘Будто голая я, а не героиня вашего фильма’: Скандалы ‘порноноваторства’ времен перестройки [As If the Naked One Was Me: The ‘Pornonovation’ Scandals of the Perestroika Era].” Новое литературное обозрение [New Literary Observer] 129 (2014), pp. 80-107.

Digital projects:

• The Quarantine Food Archive. Community archive of food memories from the pandemic. First launch in October 2020. Currently undergoing redesign process through a grant with the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design at Ohio State.
• Kvir_Izdat. Bibliographical archive of post-Soviet queer publishing. Started in March 2021.
• Soviet Journals Reconnected. Dataset of Soviet 1960s periodicals metadata.