Category Archives: Gender and Sexuality
What’s in a Strikethrough?
Can a simple manuscript strikethrough be a sign of deep affection? I’m currently writing a book on Alzhir, a special Gulag camp division designed to hold women arrested during the so-called Great Terror of 1937-1938 as “family members of traitors … Continue reading
Posted in Gender and Sexuality, Gulag, Kazakhstan, Soviet Era 1917-1991
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Russian Space History — Soviet Women in STEM Fields
In a comment to my last posting, Asif noted that in “group photos of Soviet engineering teams from the 1950s and 1960s involved in the space program, there are a surprisingly high number of women in the pictures, surprising given … Continue reading
Russian Space History — Dreams in Orbit
In an oft-quoted remark, Svetlana Boym asserted that “Soviet children of the 1960s did not dream of becoming doctors and lawyers, but cosmonauts (or, if worse came to worst, geologists.” [1. Svetlana Boym, “Kosmos: Rememberences of the Future, in Kosmos: … Continue reading
Miss Gulag
Our university is holding a Russian documentary film series. We showed one of the films that I reviewed here earlier (http://russianhistoryblog.org/author/andy/page/2/). Our next film is called Miss Gulag, produced in 2007 and directed by Maria Yatskova (for an interview with … Continue reading
Policing Sexuality in Medieval Russia
The Center for Medieval Studies has a very visible presence at Fordham University where I teach. In the history department alone, medievalist faculty and graduate students maintain a healthy and vibrant intellectual life. Although I am a historian of modern … Continue reading
