This is a report spotlighting newly hired professors in Russian Studies. It is our hope that this information will be useful to the field as a celebration of the recipients’ accomplishments and the exciting news of a successful search. We also view this as a service to candidates on the job market who have been following this year’s season, but would not otherwise have access to a compiled list of the recipients, their backgrounds and topics of research. Since many recipients are leaving earlier positions, the list offers a glimpse into potential openings for the coming season.
Whenever possible, this information has been confirmed with the recipients and departments. We can make mistakes and we are very open to correcting incorrect information or removing information that should not be shared on-line. If you have information on a position or recipient that you would like added to the report, please write as well. For all revisions and updates, please write to andrew.janco@dissertationreviews.org.
Jobs in Modern Russian and Soviet History
New York University – Assistant Professor of Russian History since 1917, including the USSR and post-Soviet Russia.
Anne O’Donnell, Prize Fellow in Economics, History, and Politics at Harvard University, Ph.D. 2014 from Princeton University, “A Noah’s Ark: Material Life and the Foundations of Soviet Authority, 1916-1923.”
Boston University – Assistant Professor of Twentieth-Century Russian and Soviet History
Alexis Peri, Assistant Professor at Middlebury College, Ph.D. 2011 from the University of California, Berkeley (Yuri Slezkine), “Minds under Siege: Rethinking Soviet Experiences inside the Leningrad Blockade, 1941–43.”
University of Miami – Assistant Professor of Modern Russian History
Krista Goff, Ph.D. Candidate, Ph.D. 2014 from the University of Michigan (Douglas Northrop and Ronald Suny), “What Makes a People? Soviet Nationality Politics and Minority Experience after World War Two.”
Bard College– Assistant Professor of Eastern European, Russian and Eurasian History
Sean McMeekin, Koç University (Turkey), Ph.D. 2001 from University of California, Berkeley (Margaret Anderson), “Muenzenberg. Rise and fall of a Communist tycoon, 1917–1940.”
Utah State University – Tenure-Track Assistant Professorship in Asian History
Danielle Ross, Assistant Professor at Nazarbaev University, Ph.D. 2012 from the University of Wisconsin, Madison (David McDonald), “From the Minbar to the Barricades: The Transformation of the Volga-Ural ‘Ulama into a Revolutionary Intelligentsia (1864-1918)”
Utah State University – Assistant Professor of 19th & 20th Century European History
Jonathan Brunstedt, Adjunct Assistant Professor at Southern Methodist University, Ph.D. 2011 from Oxford University (David Priestland), “Imagining the Soviet Nation: Cultural Memory of the Great Patriotic War and the Limits of Russian Nationalism after Stalin.”
Florida Southern College – Assistant Professor of Modern European History
Colleen Moore, Visiting Lecturer at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Ph.D. 2013 from Indiana University (Ben Eklof), “The demands of service: Peasant-state interactions in Russia during World War I.”
Birkbeck College, Department of History, Classics and Archaeology and Wellcome Trust, Postdoctoral Fellow
Johanna Conterio, Ph.D. Candidate, Ph.D. 2014 from Harvard University (Terry Martin), “The Soviet Sanatorium: Medicine, Nature and Mass Culture in Sochi, 1917-1991.”
University of Sydney – Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow
Philippa Hetherington, Ph.D. Candidate at Harvard University, Ph.D. 2014 (Terry Martin), “Victims of the Social Temperament: Prostitution, Migration and the Traffic in Women in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, 1890-1935.”
Yale University – Rice Fellow at the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies
Sara G. Brinegar, Ph.D. Candidate, Ph.D. 2014 from University of Wisconsin-Madison (Francine Hirsch), “Baku at All Costs: The Politics of Oil in the New Soviet State.”
Macalester College – Visiting Assistant Professor
Julia Fein, Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow and Lecturer at Rutgers University, Ph.D. 2012 (Sheila Fitzpatrick), “Cultural curators and provincial publics: Local museums and social change in Siberia, 1887-1941.”
University of Connecticut – University Postdoctoral Fellow at the Human Rights Institute
Andrew Paul Janco, Postdoctoral Lecturer in Human Rights at the University of Chicago, Ph.D. 2012 (Sheila Fitzpatrick), “Soviet ‘Displaced Persons’ in Europe, 1941-1951.”
Columbia University – Harriman Institute Postdoctoral Fellow
David Rainbow, Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at New York University, Ph.D. 2013 from New York University (Yanni Kotsonis), “Siberian Patriots: Participatory Autocracy and the Cohesion of the Russian Imperial State, 1858-1920.”
Colby College – Faculty Fellow in Russian and Soviet History
Addis Mason, Lecturer at University of New Hampshire, Ph.D. 2007 from Stanford University (Terence Emmons), “Mikhail Bakunin, Vissarion Belinskii, & the problem of Russian national identity, 1836-1849.”
Tufts University – Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities
Rachel Applebaum, Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Ph.D. 2012 from the University of Chicago (Sheila Fitzpatrick), “Friendship of the Peoples: Soviet-Czechoslovak Cultural and Social Contacts from the Battle for Prague to the Prague Spring, 1945-1969.”
Higher School of Economics (Moscow) – Postdoctoral Fellowship
Kristy Ironside, Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Chicago, Ph.D. 2014 (Sheila Fitzpatrick), “The Value of a Ruble: A Social History of Money in Postwar Soviet Russia, 1945–1964.”
Higher School of Economics (Moscow) – Postdoctoral Fellowship
Franziska Exeler, Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow at the European University Institute, Ph.D. 2013 from Princeton University (Stephen Kotkin), “Reckoning with Occupation. Soviet Power, Local Communities, and the Ghosts of Wartime Behavior in Post-1944 Belorussia”
Jobs in Russian Language, Culture and Literature
Princeton University – Assistant Professor of 20th Century Russian and Soviet Literature and Art
Katherine Hill Reischl, Visiting Assistant Professor at University of New Mexico, Ph.D. 2013 from the University of Chicago (Robert Bird), “Objective Authorship: Photography and Writing in Russia, 1905-1975.”
University of British Columbia – Assistant Professor of Slavic Studies
Katherine Bowers, Research Associate in Russian at University of Cambridge, Ph.D. 2011 from Northwestern University (Clare Cavanagh), “Shadows of the Gothic: Adapted Terror in Russian Fiction, 1792–1905.”
University of Cambridge – University Lecturer in Pre-Modern East Slavic Culture
Olenka Pevny, Associate Professor of Art History at University of Richmond, Ph.D. 1995 from New York University,”The Kyrylivs’ka Tserkva: The appropriation of Byzantine art and architecture in Kiev.”
University of St Andrews – Lectureship (Assistant Professor) in Russian
Katharine Holt, Harriman Institute Post-Doctoral Fellow, Ph.D. 2013 from Columbia University (Valentina Izmirlieva) “The Rise of Insider Iconography: Visions of Soviet Turkmenia in Russian-Language Literature and Film, 1921-1935.”
University of St Andrews – Lectureship (Assistant Professor) in Russian
Boris Dralyuk, Adjunct Assistant Professor at UCLA, Ph.D. 2011 from University of California, Los Angeles (David MacFadyen),”Pinkertonovshchina, 1907–1934: The Cultural Reception of “Western” Detective Serials in Pre-Revolutionary Russia and the Soviet Union.”
University of Kentucky – Assistant Professor of Russian Studies
Molly Thomasy Blasing, Visiting Lecturer at Oberlin College, Ph.D. 2014 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (David Bethea), “Writing with Light: Photo-Poetic Encounters in Tsvetaeva, Pasternak and Brodsky.”
Portland State University – Professor of Russian Language and Director of the Russian Flagship Center
William J. Comer, Professor at University of Kansas, Ph.D. 1992 from the University of California at Berkeley (Joan Grossman), “The Russian Religious Dissenters and the Literary Culture of the Symbolist Generation.”
University of Colorado Boulder – Visiting Assistant Professor of Russian Studies
Thomas Roberts, Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Ph.D. 2010 from Stanford University (Monika Greenleaf and Gabriella Safran), “Mediated Transcendence: Realism and Revelation in Russian Fiction, 1863-1898.”
University of Kansas – Visiting Assistant Professor in Russian Literature
David McVey, Ph.D. 2013 from Ohio State University, “Man Enough: Multiple Masculinities in the Films of Pavel Lungin?”
Image: Photograph of Brooklyn College by Brigid O’Keeffe.
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