Abigail Susik (NHC Fellow, 2023–24)

Abigail Susik explores the intersection of international surrealism with anti-authoritarian protest cultures in her wide-ranging research on modern and contemporary art history and visual culture. Her purview of analysis spans from the mid-nineteenth to the late-twentieth centuries with a focus on European, North American, and Latin American cultural contexts and an emphasis on social art history and labor theory methodologies, gender and sexuality perspectives, and material culture histories. She is a founding board member of the International Society for the Study of Surrealism, an associate editor of the International Journal of Surrealism, and an associate professor of art history at Willamette University.

Susik is author of Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work (Manchester University Press, 2021), editor of Resurgence! Jonathan Leake, Radical Surrealism, and the Resurgence Youth Movement, 1964-1967 (Eberhardt Press, 2023), and coeditor of the volumes Surrealism and Film after 1945: Absolutely Modern Mysteries (Manchester University Press, 2021) and Radical Dreams: Surrealism, Counterculture, Resistance (Penn State University Press, 2022; currently shortlisted for the Modernist Studies Association Edition, Anthology, and Collections Prize). She is coeditor of two forthcoming volumes: Bugs Bunny and the Blues: Selected Writings on Surrealism and Popular Culture, 1965–2008 (PM Press, 2024; coedited with legendary radical and scholar of radicalism, Paul Buhle) and Enquiry on Magic Art by André Breton (Fulgur Press, 2024). Her edited collection The Art of Animation and International Surrealism, 1920–Present is forthcoming from Bloomsbury Press in May 2025.

Selected Publications

• Rosemont, Franklin. Bugs Bunny and the Blues: Selected Writings on Surrealism and Popular Culture, 1965–2008. Edited by Paul Buhle, and Abigail Susik. Binghamton, NY: PM Press, 2024. Forthcoming.
• Susik, Abigail, ed. Resurgence! Jonathan Leake, Radical Surrealism, and the Resurgence Youth Movement, 1964–1967. Portland, OR: Eberhardt Press, 2023.
• King, Elliott H., and Abigail Susik, eds. Radical Dreams: Surrealism, Counterculture, Resistance. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2023.
• Susik, Abigail. Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2021.
• Noeheden, Kristoffer, and Abigail Susik, eds. Surrealism and Film After 1945: Absolutely Modern Mysteries. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2021.