Catherine Mullier

My research project, provisionally titled Others, Brothers and the Natural World: Colonial and Environmental Perspectives on Soviet National Identities in Inter-Soviet Travelogues after 1953, is supervised by Dr Claire Shaw and Dr Thomas Simpson. It is funded by the Wheeler History of Travel Writing Programme.

Using written travelogues and popular travel TV programmes from the time, and drawing on scholarship from film theory to postcolonial studies to environmental humanities, I explore depictions of travel within the borders of the Soviet Union. My project examines the extent to which official travel narratives supported the idea of a broad Soviet identity, encouraged national identification within the hierarchical so-called 'brotherhood of nations', or challenged such official ideas of national belonging. I am further interested in the depiction of the environment in these travel narratives and how nature interacts with national identity and narratives of the Soviet domination of the environment. Using environmental and postcolonial historical approaches, my project seeks to contribute to understandings of the Soviet Union as an empire, and to examine how travel writing and imperialism interact in this context.

catherine.mullier@warwick.ac.uk

Research interests

• The cultural and environmental history of the Soviet Union, with an especial interest in the Baltic states and Ukraine.

• Film studies, especially Soviet film.
• 20th century travel and travel writing.

Languages

• English (native)
• German (C2)
• Russian (C1)
• Ukrainian (B1)
• French (B1)