Personal Statement:
My area of interest is the history of the Soviet Union, especially the history of Central Asia in the Soviet period.
Advisor to:
Research and Teaching Interests:
- Russian and Soviet history
- Modern Central Asia
- Nations and nationalism
- Women and gender
Current Projects:
- Monograph: Marriage, Modernity, and the ‘Friendship of Nations’: Inter-ethnic Marriage in Soviet Central Asia
- Edited volume: From Central Europe to Central Asia: Ethnic Mixing in the Age of Extremes (co-edited with Benjamin Frommer) Forthcoming, University of Nebraska Press.
Selected Publications:
- “Children of Mixed Marriage in Soviet Central Asia: Dilemmas of Identity and Belonging,” forthcoming in David Rainbow, ed., Russia’s Races, University of Toronto Press.
- “What to Name the Children? Oral Histories of Ethnically Mixed Families in Soviet Central Asia,” contribution to forum on oral history in Central Asia, forthcoming in Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History.
- “Central Asian History as Soviet History,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History (fall 2016).
- “The ‘Laboratory of Peoples’ Friendship’: People of Mixed Descent in Kazakhstan from the Soviet Era to the Present,” (with Saule Ualiyeva),
in Miri Song et al., eds., Global Mixed Race (New York: New York University Press, 2014), pp. 68-90. - “Nation Making and National Conflict under Communism”
Stephen A. Smith, ed., The Oxford Handbook of World Communism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 522-541. - “Rulers and Victims Reconsidered: Geoffrey Hosking and the Russians of the Soviet Union,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, vol. 13, no. 2 (April 2012).
- “Ethnic Intermarriage, Mixed People, and the ‘Friendship of Peoples’ in Soviet and Post-Soviet Kazakhstan,” (in Russian, with Saule Ualiyeva), Neprikoznovenny Zapas (Moscow), no. 1/79 (Winter 2012).
- “Post-colonialism, interethnic intimacy, and Central Asia: a comment,”
Ab Imperio no. 2 (2008), pp. 81-83. - “Marriage, Modernity and the ‘Friendship of Nations:’ Interethnic Intimacy in Postwar Soviet Central Asia in Comparative Perspective,”
Central Asian Survey vol. 26, no. 4 (December 2007), pp. 581-600. - “Bolshevism, Patriarchy, and the Nation: The Soviet ‘Emancipation’ of Muslim Women in Pan-Islamic Perspective,”
Slavic Review vol. 65, no. 2 (Summer 2006) pp. 252-272 - “Portrait of Lenin: Carpets and National Culture in Soviet Turkmenistan,”
in Valerie Kivelson and Joan Neuberger, eds., Picturing Russia: Explorations in Visual Culture (Yale, 2008) - Tribal Nation: The Making of Soviet Turkmenistan
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). - “The Fragmented Nation: Genealogy, Identity, and Social Hierarchy in Turkmenistan,”
in Paul Spickard, ed., Race and Nation: Ethnic Systems in the Modern World (NY and London, Routledge, 2005).
Courses Taught:
- History 4C, Western Civilization, 1715-present
- 123C History of Europe, 1945-present
- 135B History of Russia, 1800-1917
- 135C History of the Soviet Union, 1917-1991
- 201C Advanced Historical Literature (Comparative)
- 135R Research Seminar in Russian History
- 183DR Readings in Central Asian History
- 200E Historical Literature (Modern Europe)
- 223A/B Research Seminar in Modern European History
Honors and Professional Activities:
- Member, Board of Directors, Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (elected to three-year term, 2016-2019).
- Member of editorial board, Central Asian Studies (London) 2014-present.
- Member of editorial board, Forschungen zur Osteuropaeischen Geschichte, Harrassowitz Verlag, Germany (2012-2017)
- Karl Jaspers Center for Transcultural Relations, University of Heidelberg (Germany) Visiting research fellowship, Sept.-Dec. 2015..
- Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation) Central Asia Research and Training Initiative grant (with Nazykbek Kydyrmyshev), 2012-2014; with Saule Ualieyeva (2009-2010)
- Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Bonn, Germany Humboldt Advanced Research Fellowship, 2009-10
- Berkshire Conference Article Prize, 2006