Abigail Susik

Abigail Susik is Department Chair and Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History and Theory at Willamette. 

She is Joint Editor of Bloomsbury’s Transnational Surrealism Series and author of two monographs: Surrealist Sabotage and the War on Work (Manchester UP, 2021) and Exorcising the Patriarchy: Leonora Carrington's Plays and Scenography, "Penelope" and "Opus Siniestrus" (Eberhardt Press, 2026). 

She is the editor of three volumes: Resurgence! Jonathan Leake, Radical Surrealism, and the Resurgence Youth Movement, 1964-1967(Eberhardt, 2023), Surrealism and Animation: Transnational Connections, 1920-Present(Bloomsbury, 2025), and Surrealism and Anti-authoritarianism After 1945 (De Gruyter Brill, 2026). Professor Susik has also coedited four volumes: Surrealism and Film after 1945: Absolutely Modern Mysteries(Manchester UP, 2021, with Kristoffer Noheden) and Radical Dreams: Surrealism, Counterculture, Resistance (Penn State UP, 2022, with Elliott King), the anthology Surrealism, Bugs Bunny, and the Blues: Selected Writings on Popular Culture 1965-2008, by Franklin Rosemont (PM Press, with Paul Buhle), and her forthcoming collection Ultra-left Aesthetics: Direct Action, Art and Tactical Imagination Since the 1960s(Manchester UP, with David A J Murrieta Flores, 2027). Professor Susik was a contributing editor to Volume III of the Special Edition of Enquiry onMagic Artby André Breton, (with Robert Ansell, Tessel Bauduin) (Fulgur Press, 2025). In 2027, Common Notions Press will publish her bookIn Search of the Unified Field: Conversations with Ben Morea, and her next monograph, devoted to surrealism and the rise of Critical whiteness studies in the USA, is forthcoming in 2027-2028 from Verso Books.

Susik is a founding Board Member of the International Society for the Study of Surrealism and was elected Vice President in fall 2025. She was also a lead curator of the recent retrospective exhibition "Alan Glass: Sorprendente Hallazgo," at the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City (October 2024-February, 2025), a show which traveled to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts as "Worlds of Wonder: The Surrealist Journey of Alan Glass" (April-September, 2025).

Her exhibition, "Resurgence Youth Movement, 1964-67: Teenrevolt, Surrealism, Anarchism," co-curated with Sean Lovitt and Interference Archive, was on display at Interference Archive in Brooklyn from January 15-May 15, 2026, with opening events at Interference Archive, Woodbine, and Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space, January 15-17, 2026 (NYC).

With Grégory Pierrot, she co-edited the fall 2025 special issue of African American Review, Black Surrealisms: “Cymbals of Deeper Experience,” featuring essays by Robin D. G. Kelley, Aldon Nielsen, Terri Francis, Tiffany Barber, and Kathy Lou Schultz, with poems by Will Alexander and Bernardo Wade.

She was also the guest editor of the special double centenary issue of Journal of Avant-Garde Studies, Post-war Surrealism and Anti-Authoritarianism, volumes 4.2 (2024) and 5.1 (2025), including essays by Anne Foucault, María Clara Bernal, Steven Harris, Sean Lovitt, Michael Löwy, Michael Richardson, Raymond Spiteri, Stevphen Shukaitis, and Abigail Susik.

Dr. Susik is a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Review of Books. In 2024, she was the Allen G. ClowesFellow at the National Humanities Center, and in 2025, she was a Senior Core Fellowat the Institute of Advanced Studies at the Central European University. She has also been awarded a 2025 Humboldt Research Award for 'internationally recognised researchers.' In 2028-2029, she will spend 12 months at the Kunsthistorisches Institut, Freie Universität, Berlin, completing her next book.