Routledge Research in Art and Politics
About the Book Series
Routledge Research in Art and Politics is a new series focusing on politics and government as examined by scholars working in the fields of art history and visual studies. Proposals for monographs and edited collections on this topic are welcomed.
Fascism and Anti-Fascism in Mexican Graphic Art and Visual Culture in the early 20th Century
1st Edition
By Beth Matusoff Merfish
August 03, 2026
This book challenges the national myth that Mexican art between the Mexican Revolution and World War II was inevitably and thoroughly populist and nationalist and argues instead that there was no such all-encompassing spirit, and even art intended for broad populations was not always democratic. ...
Art and Capitalism: A Contemporary Perspective
1st Edition
Edited
By Danielle Child
July 31, 2026
A central tenet of capitalism is the production of commodities to create profit (money); as such, the logical starting place for this companion is the relationship of art to these foundational elements of capitalism. However, as the contributions to the volume reveal, capitalism encompasses more ...
Art in Ukraine Between Identity Construction and Anti-Colonial Resistance
1st Edition
Edited
By Svitlana Biedarieva
July 20, 2026
This edited volume traces the development of art practices in Ukraine from the 2004 Orange Revolution, through the 2013–2014 Revolution of Dignity, to the ongoing Russian war of aggression. Contributors explore how transformations of identity, the emergence of participatory democracy, relevant ...
Dutch Neorealism, Cinema, and the Politics of Painting, 1927–1945
1st Edition
By Stephanie Lebas Huber
July 20, 2026
This study offers a radically new perspective on Dutch Neorealism, one that emphasizes the role of film as an apparatus, the effects of which, when emulated in painting, can reproduce the affective experience of film-watching. More of a tendency than a tightly defined style or "ism," Neorealism is ...
Soviet Socialist Realism and Art in the Asia-Pacific
1st Edition
By Alison Carroll
July 20, 2026
This study evaluates how the ideology of Socialist Realism, developed by the Soviets in policies and the practices of art, has been influential in the Asia-Pacific region from 1917 until today. Focusing primarily on Russia, then China, Vietnam, Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and ...
The Deployment of Art: The Imperial War Museum’s Artistic Records Committee, 1968–1982
1st Edition
By Clare Carolin
July 20, 2026
This book explores the Artistic Records Committee (ARC) of the Imperial War Museum (IWM) as a bureaucratic mechanism that enabled the deployment of art as an instrument of war. The ARC was established in 1972 to commission artistic records of activities involving the British Armed Forces (BAF) ...
Art Criticism and the Appeal to Democracy
1st Edition
By Craig Peariso
July 03, 2026
While engaging with the interconnected concepts of communication and democracy in postwar American and European art criticism, this book provides a historical assessment of how these two related trends pertain to modern and contemporary art theory and practice. Looking at both the history of...
Interrogating the Visual Culture of Trumpism
1st Edition
Edited
By Grant Hamming, Natalie E. Phillips
June 22, 2026
Bringing together scholars from art history, visual studies, and related disciplines, this edited volume asks why Trumpism looks the way it does and what that look means for American—and global—society. Grouped into six categories, the essays in this volume tackle some of the most perplexing—and ...
Mexican Media Art, Ecologies, the Posthuman, and Politics
1st Edition
By Claudia Costa Pederson
June 22, 2026
This volume focuses on the connection between ecological thought and the technological arts in Mexico in order to challenge assumptions that ecological thought is a domain exclusive to the arts of the Global North and reconceive it as an inventive nexus of materialist speculations into a global ...
Political Economy, Race, and the Image of Nature in the United States, 1825–1878
1st Edition
By Evan Robert Neely
December 26, 2025
Political Economy, Race, and the Image of Nature in the United States, 1825–1878 is an interdisciplinary work analyzing the historical origins of a dominant concept of Nature in the culture of the United States during the period of its expansion across the continent. Chapters analyze the ways in ...
Antisemitism, Homophobia, and Contemporary Art
1st Edition
By Ana Hoffner ex-Prvulovic*
December 23, 2025
This book analyzes synchronization as a symptom of the contemporary art world. Acting as a tool within present-day social, economic, and political systems, synchronization assigns individuals to predetermined forms of representation. At its core, this book challenges normative synchronization ...
The German Peasants' War, Visual Culture, and Political Subjectivation
1st Edition
By Jonathan Trayner
November 25, 2025
This study examines the visual productions of the German Peasants’ War – pamphlets, banners, and clothing – to argue for the disruptive and radical visual legacy in which hierarchies and modes of subjection were overturned. Drawing on the author’s experience as a print maker and artist, the book ...