Category Archives: Uncategorized
Join Us at the Summer Research Lab!
Amidst all the craziness of this past … forever … I’m pleased to say that the Summer Research Laboratory at Illinois continues strong. We have a great program this coming summer, and excellent fellowship support available for scholars. (In addition … Continue reading
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Baptists and repression – one oral history account
In my first blog about the oral history interviews conducted as part of my study of Protestant life in the USSR I wrote about the life of Z. who was born in 1925 on the outskirts of Moscow. She came … Continue reading
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Anatomy of a Course: The Final Exam
The final exam serves many functions. It’s a moment of assessment, of course, a relatively important one in this class at 40% of the total grade. A student writes for two hours, and you read it for fifteen minutes. If … Continue reading
Anatomy of a Course: “A bit of a mess”
How should a college professor teach? Pick up a guide for new instructors (or attend a workshop aimed at the same), and you may well be advised to train yourself to be a “guide on the side” rather than a … Continue reading
Four Noteworthy Attributes of “Threads of Empire”
Some people crank out books rapidly, one quickly after the last. Others take longer to accomplish the task. Based as it is on a dissertation defended at Columbia University back in 1999, Charles Steinwedel’s Threads of Empire has been a … Continue reading
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Demons
“Every extremely shameful, immeasurably humiliating, mean, and, above all, ridiculous position I have happened to get into in my life has always aroused in me, along with boundless wrath, an unbelievable pleasure.” – Nikolai Stavrogin, in Demons (692) I gave … Continue reading
Posted in Teaching Russian History, Terrorism, Uncategorized
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Foreigners
I’m in St. Petersburg right now, enjoying my research leave and finding all sorts of lovely bits and pieces in the archives. I’ve been pleased to find some connections I hoped to find and frustrated by hints of larger stories … Continue reading
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New online journal
Just this week a new online journal for Russian Studies arrived, The Journal of Frontier Studies/Zhurnal frontirnykh issledovanii. It is being edited by a group of scholars at Astrakhan State University, and aspires to put Russian and Western scholars into … Continue reading
On Hungary, Gorbachev, Fence Demolitions, Wet Kisses, and Collapsing Empires
Historians often say that at least twenty years must pass before people can begin to grasp the true significance of an event. The passage of time dampens the passions, permits a more objective view, reveals new documents, and provides some … Continue reading
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More on Empire, Pro and Contra
Many thanks to Josh for getting back with such wide-ranging elaborations on my, David’s, and John Paul’s original posts. In the interest of keeping things going, let me take up just one of Josh’s points here, hoping to chime in … Continue reading
Posted in Imperial Apocalypse, Uncategorized, World War I
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ASEEES reverses course on Cohen-Tucker Fellowship
I blogged a couple of months ago about the controversy regarding the Cohen-Tucker Fellowship. After hearing from a large number of ASEEES members, the board held a special meeting and reversed its earlier decision. It has also changed its procedures … Continue reading
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The Case of the Dead Cheese Master, Part XI: People
I’m a week late in posting this installment of the cheese master’s story because I spent all of last week at Disneyworld on a family trip, and that wasn’t conducive to posting (though I did finish a conference paper!). This … Continue reading
Dear Stephen Cohen: I Love You; I’m Sorry; You’re Wrong
Steve, I hope you don’t mind an expression of affection from an admirer of a certain age. We’ve never met, but I’ve known you my entire professional life. I came into the field as a Stanford undergraduate in 1987, scared … Continue reading
Posted in Post-Soviet Russia, Ukraine, Uncategorized
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The Ebola Czar and American Czars in General (Open Thread)
So the NY Times is proclaiming that Obama is thinking about creating an ‘Ebola Czar‘. One of the oddities of the modern American world, indeed, is a love of the idea of a “czar”: almost any time a major public … Continue reading
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Just in Time for Teaching (English Language Sources for Russian History)
There may be a few teachers out there working on syllabi, as well as students and other researchers considering topics in Russian history. For decades, the great Anthony Cross has helped scholars discover the corpus of English-language testimonies about Russia … Continue reading
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Myth, Memory, Trauma – Untidy Thoughts
Having re-read the various posts on Polly’s book, including her latest entry – which assembles comparative cases in order to highlight what was and wasn’t distinctive about Soviet memory of the Stalin era – I think it might be useful … Continue reading
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History in the Crimea & Ukraine Today
History is being blithely tossed about these days by everyone from Vladimir Putin himself to Sarah Palin and John McCain. What is the real story? Is there a real story? To answer that question, I invited two eminent historians – … Continue reading
Posted in Cold War, Crimea, Current events in the Putin Era, Nostalgia and Memory, Post-Soviet Russia, Russia in World History, Russian History in Popular Culture, Teaching Russian History, Transnational History, Ukraine, Uncategorized, World War II
Tagged Crimea, History, Mark Kramer, MIT, Putin, Serhii Plokhii, Ukraine, UPA
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Scalar for Historians (Tutorial)
Just a quick follow-up to my earlier post about Scalar, an open source web authoring tool produced by the Alliance for Networking Visual Culture, of which the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities is a member. We’re trying out … Continue reading
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Summer Research Lab 2014: At Your Service!
Are we hosting the Summer Research Lab this year at Illinois? You bet! As in each of the previous forty years, we look forward to seeing researchers of all disciplines and career stages here in Champaign-Urbana, to participate in workshops, … Continue reading
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The Amnesties of Tsar Vladimir
It seems obvious that President Vladimir Putin has chosen to issue the recent amnesties of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Maria Alokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, and probably the Greenpeace 30 as a way to generate good will on the eve of his great personal … Continue reading
