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Dr. B. (Boris) Noordenbos

Associate Professor
Faculty of Humanities
Literatuurwetenschap

Visiting address
  • Spuistraat 134
  • Room number: 717
Postal address
  • Postbus 1642
    1000 BP Amsterdam
  • Profile

    I am Associate Professor of Literary & Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam and affiliated with the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA). My research interests are diverse, and revolve around the multifaceted question of how (popular) culture imagines and confronts ‘the past’. I focus primarily on the countries of the former socialist world, and on Russia in particular. In my monograph Post-Soviet Literature and the Search for a Russian Identity (Palgrave Macmillan 2016), I analyzed literary narratives of cultural trauma from the 1990s, and explored their contrasts and entanglements with emerging stories of wished-for national and imperial revival in the early Putin-era. More recently, I have begun to delve into the slippery phenomenon of nostalgia, both in Russia and beyond. Together with Ksenia Robbe (University of Groningen) and Otto Boele (Leiden University) I have co-edited a volume on cultural expressions of (counter-)nostalgia in the ex-Soviet republics (Post-Soviet Nostalgia: Confronting the Empire’s LegaciesRoutledge 2019). 

    In 2021 I started my ERC-funded research project CONSPIRATORIAL MEMORY: Cultures of Suspicion in Post-Socialist Europe (2021-2026). Here I combine my fascination with memory and temporality with my deep curiosity for conspiracy culture. Together with my team I explore prominent conspiracy stories in Central and East European literature, film, television, commemorative rituals and online culture. The project aims to take the emerging field of conspiracy theory studies to a new level. While academic inquiry into conspiracy theory is unquestionably on the rise, existing research is still overwhelmingly concentrated on Western Europe and the United States. Established perspectives also tend to treat conspiracy culture in historical and cultural isolation, neglecting its reliance on earlier events and narrative templates, and often overlooking its cross-cultural dynamics. Yet conspiracy theories never develop in a vacuum, and the project investigates their movements and exchanges, both contemporary and historical. CONSPIRATORIAL MEMORY thus illuminates the historical references, transnational interactions, and online circulations that give conspiracy theories their rhetorical and emotional momentum in the post-socialist era. Relying on a theoretical framework that enriches conspiracy research with affect studies and cultural memory studies, the project zooms in on a selection of recent conspiracy-based cultural imaginations from Poland, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. The project also addresses the parallels between the analyzed cases and conspiracy culture from Western Europe and the United States.

    foto: Bob Bronshoff
  • Publications

    2024

    • Tuters, M. D., & Noordenbos, B. (2024). Ambient propaganda on pro-Kremlin “WarTok”: From unidirectional influence to multidirectional imitation. Manuscript in preparation.
    • Tuters, M. D., & Noordenbos, B. (2024). Faking Sense of War: OSINT as pro-Kremlin Propaganda . In M. Mortensen, & M. Pantti (Eds.), Media and the War in Ukraine (pp. 97-115). Peter Lang.

    2023

    • Boerman, C., & Noordenbos, B. (2023). Performing Violence: Trauma and Reenactment in Documentary Film. In V. Agnew, S. Stach, & J. Tomann (Eds.), Reenactment Case Studies: Global Perspectives on Experiential History (pp. 308-332). (Routledge Studies in Modern History). Routledge. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429445668-21 [details]
    • Noordenbos, B. (2023). A (Cold) War for Vaccines: Retro-Conspiracism in Kremlin-Aligned Russian Discourse on Sputnik V. In M. Butter, & P. Knight (Eds.), Covid Conspiracy Theories in Global Perspective (pp. 293-308). Routledge. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003330769-27 [details]

    2022

    2021

    • Noordenbos, B. (2021). Fighters of the Invisible Front: Re-imagining the Aftermath of the Great Patriotic War in Recent Russian Television Series. In A. Weiss-Wendt , & N. Adler (Eds.), The Future of the Soviet Past: The Politics of History in Putin's Russia (pp. 150-169). Indiana University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv21hrjhv.11 [details]
    • Noordenbos, B., & Souch, I. (2021). Nostalgic Mediations of the Soviet Past in Nikolai Lebedev’s Remake of The Crew (2016). In E. Cuelenaere, G. Willems, & S. Joyce (Eds.), European Film Remakes (pp. 149-162). (Screen Serialities). Edinburgh University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474460668-015 [details]

    2020

    • Boele, O., Noordenbos, B., & Robbe, K. (2020). Introduction: The Many Practices of Post-Soviet Nostalgia: Affect, Appropriation, Contestation. In O. Boele, B. Noordenbos, & K. Robbe (Eds.), Post-Soviet Nostalgia: Confronting the Empire's Legacies (pp. 1-17). (Routledge Studies in Cultural History). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429318931-1 [details]
    • Boele, O., Noordenbos, B., & Robbe, K. (Eds.) (2020). Post-Soviet Nostalgia: Confronting the Empire's Legacies. (Routledge Studies in Cultural History). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429318931 [details]
    • Noordenbos, B. (2020). To Be Continued: Post-Soviet Nostalgia in Sergei Miroshnichenko’s Time-Lapse Documentary Series Born in the USSR. In O. Boele, B. Noordenbos, & K. Robbe (Eds.), Post-Soviet Nostalgia: Confronting the Empire’s Legacies (pp. 133-153). (Routledge Studies in Cultural History). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429318931-7 [details]

    2018

    2016

    2022

    • Noordenbos, B. (2022). Review of: The Victory Banner over the Reichstag: Film, Document, and Ritual in Russia’s Contested Memory of World War II. By Jeremy Hicks. Russia and East European Studies. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020. x, 285. Notes. Bibliogra- phy. Index. Illustrations. Plates. Photographs. $45.00, hard-bound. Slavic Review, 81(3), 844-846.

    2018

    2019

    • Boele, O., & Noordenbos, B. (Eds.) (2019). Служив отлично благородно = Having served excellently, nobly: Festschrift for Sander Brouwer on the Occasion of his Retirement. (Pegasus Oost-Europese Studies; Vol. 33). Uitgeverij Pegasus. [details]
    • Noordenbos, B. (2019). "Where is Stierlitz When You Need Him?": Mythologizing the Russian-Ukrainian Conflict. In O. Boele, & B. Noordenbos (Eds.), Служив отлично благородно = Having served excellently, nobly: Festschrift for Sander Brouwer on the Occasion of his Retirement (pp. 137-152). (Pegasus Oost-Europese Studies; Vol. 33). Uitgeverij Pegasus. [details]
    • Noordenbos, B. (2019). Fantasieën van een verloren thuis: Affect, retoriek en de politiek van nostalgie. Vooys, 37(1), 59-64. [details]

    2020

    • Noordenbos, B. (2020). Imagining The Invisible: Soviet Durability in Chernobyl Cinema. Paper presented at Post-Socialist Memory in Global Perspective, Chisinau , Moldova, Republic of.

    Prize / grant

    Membership / relevant position

    • Noordenbos, B. (2020). Memory Studies Association.

    Talk / presentation

    • Noordenbos, B. (speaker) (24-11-2020). Contribution as panelist, ASCA Summit 2020.

    Others

    • Noordenbos, B. (host) (22-11-2019). Stef Craps (hosting a visitor).
    This list of publications is extracted from the UvA-Current Research Information System. Questions? Ask the library or the Pure staff of your faculty / institute. Log in to Pure to edit your publications. Log in to Personal Page Publication Selection tool to manage the visibility of your publications on this list.
  • Ancillary activities
    • No ancillary activities