His research focuses on Stalinist culture in the historical context of modernity and the intellectual context of Western and Russian modernism. He has published journal and encyclopedia articles on socialist realism, Thaw film, and Russian formalism. During the current academic year, Petre holds a fellowship at the Humanities Center at the University of Pittsburgh. He is working on a book project provisionally entitled The Future Is What Follows: Stalinism and the Traffic of Essences.