We are very excited to announce that “Russian Studies Dissertation Reviews” has gained two new editors, Julia Fein (Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey) and Andrew Janco (University of Chicago)!
Our three editors — Philippa Hetherington (Harvard University), Julia and Andrew — will bring you friendly, non-critical reviews of recently defended, unpublished dissertations in this great field. If you are interested in having your dissertation reviewed, please fill out the Review Application Form. Click here if you are interested in being a reviewer. If you wish to help out Dissertation Reviews in some other way, please contact info@dissertationreviews.org.
Our principal Russian Studies Editors can be reached at julia.fein@dissertationreviews.org and andrew.janco@dissertationreviews.org.
Introducing Our Field Editors
Philippa Hetherington is a PhD candidate in Russian history at Harvard University. She is currently completing research for her dissertation, titled “Victims of the Social Temperament: Prostitution, Migration and the Traffic in Women in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union.” Building on research conducted in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Odessa, Geneva, and London, this project examines the emergence of “trafficking in women” as a specific crime in turn of the century Russia, and links this with the development of international humanitarian law, imperial governance, and migratory regimes. Her broader interests include the history of gender and sexuality, comparative legal history, and culture and society at the fin-de-siècle. [Website here]
Julia Fein is a Mellon postdoc at Rutgers University in the Department of History. Her dissertation, “Cultural Curators and Provincial Publics: Local Museums and Social Change in Siberia, 1887-1941,” was completed in 2012 at the University of Chicago. She is currently working on a book manuscript during her tenure in a two-year interdisciplinary seminar on Networks of Exchange in History at the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis. Aside from networks and exchange, her academic interests include imperial and commodity histories, science studies, materiality and infrastructures, expertise and the intellectual history of planning in Russian/early Soviet space. She is currently working on two articles about Siberian museum scandals of the early twentieth century: one on rock samples that talk through the local newspaper; and another on Buddhist museum employees who are arrested for illegal prayer in front of the museum’s Buddhist objects. [Website here]
Andrew Janco studies Russian and Soviet history. His work focuses on the history of warfare, displacement and human rights protections for refugees. His dissertation, “Soviet ‘Displaced Persons’ in Europe, 1941-1951” (University of Chicago, 2012), studies the westward migration of more than five million Soviet citizens during World War II, their experiences as postwar “displaced persons” and eventual resettlement as refugees during the Cold War. He is currently adapting this work into a book. Andrew has also published articles on the childhood war games of Peter the Great and televised improv comedy during the Soviet 1960s. [Website here]
Image: Medieval Gusli players. Painting by Victor Vasnetsov (1848-1926). Wikimedia Commons.