About me
I am Associate Professor of Early Modern European Art and Material Cultures at Boise State University. Before accepting this position, I was a Junior Research Fellow at Central European University, where I received funding from the Central European University Budapest Foundation, and the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Société et culture. I hold a BA and an MA from University College London, an MRes from the European University Institute, and a PhD from McGill University. In December 2023, I was voted President-Elect of the Society of Historians of Eastern European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture for a three-year term.
My primary field of research is early modern art and material culture, with an emphasis on Germanic and Slavonic Europe (1400–1700), but I venture out into the modern period to provide a longue-durée perspective on this historically complex region. I focus on topics that connect past and present, including myths of cultural distinctiveness, cultural entanglement, ecocriticism, and environmental humanities. My first monograph, Transcultural Things and the Spectre of Orientalism in Early Modern Poland-Lithuania, was published by Manchester University Press in 2023. I am currently working on my second book, which aims to be the first ecocritical examination of art and material culture in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Lithuania, Poland, Prussia, and Rus’.
I have established a reputation as a leading voice in Anglo-American academia on art and material culture in early modern Poland-Lithuania (the predecessor to present-day Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine). As a co-investigator on the AHRC-funded research project Connected Central European Worlds, 1500–1700 (2021–2023), my work involved actively engaging in and driving debates about methodological approaches to artefacts produced and consumed in this underrepresented and undertheorized region of Europe. In 2022, I served as a steering committee member for From Kyivan Rus’ to Modern Ukraine: Virtual Conversations on History, Art, and Cultural Heritage, a year-long public lecture and roundtable series co-organized by Dumbarton Oaks, North of Byzantium, and Connected Central European Worlds, now in development for publication. Since 2023, we have been running a mentorship program designed to support at-risk scholars from Ukraine (in its second iteration expanding to include emerging scholars from East-Central and Southeast Europe), helping them integrate into Anglo-American academia.
As a Central and Eastern Europeanist, I am particularly sensitive to hierarchies that still pervade Art History despite the ongoing attempts to 'globalize' it. I am committed to provincializing Europe from within and rethinking artistic and cultural geographies. Practicing Art History as a Central and Eastern Europeanist always means asking questions about what Europe is and where it is; how many Europes there are; how unique and distinctive the subcontinent is vis-à-vis other artistic and cultural traditions; what does it mean to be European; and how such an identity-position has changed over the years?
Contact:
tomaszgrusiecki[at]boisestate.edu
External links:
Boise State site | academia.edu | ORCID