Bird, Dr. Robert James Douglas Internationally renowned scholar of Russian literature and cinema and a professor at the University of Chicago died Monday September 7th after a nine-month battle with colon cancer. He was born September 16th 1969 in England to James and Margaret Bird, and moved to Golden Valley, Minnesota in 1979 at age nine. He is survived by his beloved wife Dr. Christina Kiaer and stepdaughter Zora Kresak-Kiaer, his parents, sister Catherine Bird, and brother Simon Bird, and other family members. Robert always showed exceptional intellectual potential, graduating at the top of his class from Benilde-St. Margaret's High School in suburban Minneapolis at sixteen. He earned two BA degrees with honors from the University of Washington in 1991, graduating again at the top of his class. He was awarded a Mellon Scholarship, and a Sterling Scholarship from Yale University. He completed his Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literature at Yale University in 1998, with a dissertation on Viacheslav Ivanov. After teaching for three years at Dickinson College, in 2001 he took a position in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literature at the University of Chicago, and would also become a member of the Department of Cinema and Media Studies, and the School of Divinity. He served as chair of both departments, and of the Fundamentals program in the College. Robert was highly respected for his erudition, but he was also joyful in his intellect, endlessly curious and open, ready to be engaged by new ways of thinking. He published an astonishing amount of work across an extraordinary range of topics and approaches. His first book, The Russian Prospero: The Creative Universe of Viacheslav Ivanov was followed by two books on Tarkovsky, including Andrei Tarkovsky: Elements of Cinema, which has been translated into Chinese, Farsi, and Portuguese, and will be published in Russian this year in Moscow, with Robert's own translation. He also wrote a critical biography of Dostoevsky and edited numerous volumes and journal issues in both Russian and English. He wrote fluently in Russian and became a trusted authority in matters of translation. Just days before his death he completed work toward a volume of his collected essays in Russian, which will be published next year. His work in recent years had turned more decisively toward problems of aesthetics, socialism and revolution: he was completing the book Soul Machine: How Soviet Film Modeled Socialism, a labor of many years. It will be published posthumously. He had a passion for thinking with other people, which was reflected in his seemingly boundless energy in organizing landmark conferences and collaborating with scholars and practitioners across fields, including poets, filmmakers and visual artists around the world.. He had recently been working more in the intersection of art, exhibition and politics, in his commitment to knowledge and collaboration as instruments of change. In the fall of 2017, to mark the centennial of the Russian Revolution, he co-curated, with his wife Christina and Zachary Cahill, the exhibition Revolution Every Day at the Smart Museum in Chicago and co-wrote with them the catalogue Revolution Every Day: A Calendar. He continued his collaboration with artist and filmmaker Cauleen Smith, whose work had been included in that exhibition, developing a project with her on Paul Robeson and Blackness in the USSR. He began to publish essays and reviews in art journals such as e-flux and Art Agenda, memoir essays in The Point ("1989") and Portable Gray ("Moscow Diary"), and, in the last months, two beautiful and more personal essays on his illness, "Illness in a plague year" (The Point, April 15), and "The Omens: Tarkovsky, Sacrifice, Cancer," which appeared two days after his death, September 9, in Apparatus. Robert was a strong physical presence. He was an athlete, like his father, Jim. He played rugby and soccer as a boy, and continued to play soccer as an adult (twice on the same team with his father), adding tennis and, with the greatest passion, squash. He was also an ardent biker, he commuted from Edgewater to the University of Chicago on the Lakeshore bike path and continued to ride until the last month of his life. Robert's love and knowledge of soccer and especially his passion for the Manchester United Football club were unmatched. He was, by profession and inclination, an intense spectator of film, as well as of art, with a particular love of El Greco and Il Baciccio. His interest in Russian language and culture led him to live for a year in the Soviet Union in 1989, and to return regularly, including a trip during the fall of communism, much to the consternation of his parents. Robert was much appreciated for his brilliant, understated humor. His punning was a source of delight that could border on exasperation. The qualities that come up again and again from everyone who knew him are generosity, kindness, strength and humor, always accompanied by tact and unassuming grace. He was the kind of interlocutor who buoyed and increased the capacities of those around him. Thoughtful is perhaps the best word for him, in both senses: he was caring and solicitous for others, and he was cerebral in the most genuine, committed way. He was a comrade to everyone, who worked with him, and to those he was closest to, he was a constant source of joy and peace. His passing leaves a hole in so many universes. All who loved him had the feeling that he was just getting started, and that there was so much more to come. His memory will burn brightly in all of us. A Celebration of Life was held in Chicago on September 11th, 2020.

Published on September 27, 2020