Author Meets Critics: Alexis Lerner's "Post-Soviet Graffiti"

Session Submission Type: Author meet critics

Session Description

This book roundtable brings together several prominent comparative scholars who study autocracies – Colleen Wood, Jeff Kopstein, Lisel Hintz, Tim Frye, and Elizabeth Plantan – to discuss and critique a new book about political graffiti and free speech under authoritarian rule in the post-Soviet region, authored by Alexis Lerner of the US Naval Academy.

‘Post-Soviet Graffiti: Free Speech in Authoritarian States’ (University of Toronto Press, 2024) highlights graffiti not only as a popular public aesthetic but also as a powerful tool for expressing political views in environments characterized by censorship and repression. In the book, Lerner demonstrates that graffiti is a purposefully anonymous and accessible artform, which allows it to be an effective tool for circumventing censorship and expressing political views. This is especially true for marginalized populations and for those living in otherwise closed and censored states, where graffiti can be used to speak out and even mobilize against autocratic leadership and repressive policies.

This book is the result of extensive ethnographic study. For more than a decade, Lerner combed the alleyways, underpasses, and public squares of cities once under communist rule, from Berlin in the west to Vladivostok in the east, recording thousands of cases of critical and satirical political street art and cataloging these artworks linguistically and thematically across space and time (see also: Lerner 2021). Complemented by first-hand interviews with leading artists, activists, and politicians from across the region, ‘Post-Soviet Graffiti’ provides theoretical reflection on public space as a site for political action, a semiotic reading of signs and symbols, and street art as a form of text. In short, Lerner reveals that graffiti does not exist in a vacuum; rather, it can be read as a narrative about a place, the people who live there, and the things that matter to them.

The scholars proposed for this panel represent diversity in their stage of career, sub-disciplinary expertise, geographic focus, and institutional-affiliation. Dr. Colleen Wood (Century College) is an expert on both ethnographic work and political pop culture in Central Asia. Dr. Jeff Kopstein (University of California-Irvine) has expertise on ethnic tensions and violent European history. In particular, he provides unmatched insight on Chapter 9 of the book, where Lerner unpacks references to the Holocaust and Europe’s fascist history in the public art that she encountered during her fieldwork. Dr. Lisel Hintz (Johns Hopkins SAIS) is a scholar of authoritarian culture and contestations over national identity in Turkey. Dr. Elizabeth Plantan (Stetson University) is an expert in state-society relations in authoritarian Russia and China. Finally, Dr. Tim Frye (Columbia University) is one of the foremost experts on the politics of contemporary Russia, particularly under Putin.

Sub Unit

• Division 11: Comparative Politics

Chair

• Colleen Wood Century College

Presenters

• Alexis Monique Lerner The United States Naval Academy

• Jeffrey Kopstein University of California, Irvine

• Elizabeth Plantan Stetson University

• Timothy Frye