William Craft Brumfield is Professor of Slavic Studies and Sizeler Professor of Jewish Studies at Tulane University. Dr. Brumfield is an internationally-known and widely-celebrated scholar of Russian architecture. As a student of Russian literature and history, and as a photographer and historian of Russian architecture, Brumfield has worked in Russia since the summer of 1970. After earning his doctorate from the Slavic Department at the University of California, Berkeley, he taught at the University of Wisconsin and at Harvard University (Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages). He is currently Professor of Slavic Studies at Tulane University. Brumfield has received numerous fellowships and awards, including a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, a NEH Fellowship at the National Humanities Center, and a NEH collaborative grant with American Councils. In 2002 Brumfield was elected to the Russian Academy of Architecture and Construction Sciences, and in 2006 he was elected honorary member of the Russian Academy of the Fine Arts—the only U.S citizen to be a member of two Russian state academies. Russian colleagues have created a bilingual archival site dedicated to Brumfield's photographic work, including regional avant-garde architecture.

Among his many books are: Gold in Azure: One Thousand Years of Russian Architecture (1983), The Origins of Modernism in Russian Architecture (1991), A History of Russian Architecture (1993; chosen "Notable Book of the Year" by The New York Times Book Review), Lost Russia: Photographing the Ruins of Russian Architecture (1995) and Landmarks of Russian Architecture: A Photographic Survey (1997). All of these books are illustrated with his own photographs. In 2004, The University of Washington Press published an expanded edition of his standard work, A History of Russian Architecture (2004). His most recent book is Architecture at the End of the Earth: Photographing the Russian North (2015). Brumfield has also published 28 books in Russia, most of which are dedicated to Russia’s architectural heritage. All of the above books are illustrated with his own photographs. Brumfield’s photographs are part of the collection of the Photographic Archives of the National Gallery of Art and have been exhibited in museums in this country and in Russia. A large selection of his work is also featured at the “Meeting of Frontiers” site, maintained by the Library of Congress. Through initiatives sponsored by the University of Washington and the National Gallery of Art, work is now underway to archive the entire Brumfield photographic collection of more than 170,000 items.

At this year's AATSEEL Conference, Dr. Brumfield will present his recent work, "Back to the Future: Reviving Moscow's Avant-garde Architecture" on Friday, February 8, 2019, 4:30pm-6:30pm, and will join us at the President's Reception beginning at 7:00pm. His recent work is based on decades of photographing and documenting works by major avant-garde architects in Moscow and other regions, including Siberia. We warmly invite all AATSEEL attendees to join us at this unique and once-in-a-lifetime event on February 8th in New Orleans.

Related and additional work by Dr. Brumfield may be found showcased below:

Avant-garde Architecture in the Photographer's Lens (Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, Moscow).

Dr. Brumfield's Photographs of Soviet Avant-garde Buildings

Dr. Brumfield's Photographs of Avant-garde Buildings (State Museum of Architecture, Moscow)

Dr. Brumfield's "My Life in Russia"

Early 20th-century photographs from the Prokudin-Gorsky Collection (Library of Congress) and photographs from William C. Brumfield Collection (National Gallery of Art)

Лекция «Авангардная архитектура глазами фотографа» (At the State Museum of Architecture, Moscow)

Discovering Russia is a series of sixteen volumes (in Russian). Each volume showcases the architecture of one of Russia's regions with photographs and commentaries by Dr. Brumfield. Here is a similar series of related books on the Vologda region by Dr. Brumfield.