Research Overview

Research Overview

I am a Modern European historian. Since the publication of my book, Mother of the Church: Sofia Svechina, the Salon, and the Politics of Catholicism in Nineteenth Century Russia and France (Northern Illinois University Press, 2016; winner of 2018 Harry Koenig Book Award, American Catholic Historical Association), I have shifted my interest to such topics as ecofeminism, masculinity, gender and environment, and gender and science. I am currently completing a book, The Politburo Goes Hunting: Masculinity, Nature, and Power in the Soviet Union, and launching two new projects in ice humanities:
1) together with a group of international colleagues from the PAMIR project (Switzerland), I am co-authoring an eco-biography of the Fedchenko glacier (Tajikistan);
2) with Professor Stewart Weaver (UR, History), I am researching the history of early glacial sciences in the Alps.


Awards:

2023: NEH Planning International Collaboration Grant

2022: University of Rochester Pump Primer research grant

2021: Public Outreach Award, American Society for Environmental History

2020: Goergen Teaching Award, University of Rochester

2018: Harry Koenig Book Award, American Catholic Historical Association

Courses Offered (subject to change)

• GSW 105:  Sex and Power
• GSW/GSW 200/200W:  History of Feminisms/Colloquium in Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies
• GSW/GSW/HIS/AAS 219/219W/200/228:  The Politics of Sport: Race, Gender, and National Identity in Athletic Competition
• GSW/HIS 208/100:  The Case of Sherlock Holmes: Race, Gender, and Crime in the British Empire
• GSW/GSW/AAS/HIS 213/213W/213/256:  Politics of Nature: Race, Gender, and the Environment
• GSW 232:  History of Masculinity
• GSW 235:  History of Sex and Body

Selected Publications

• "Diplomacy in the Woods: Nature, Hunting, Masculinity, and Soviet Diplomacy under N.S. Khrushchev," Diplomatica: a Journal of Diplomacy and Society 4 (2022): 269 - 305. 
• “Oral Environmental History and Community-Based Participatory Research: Studying Climate Change in Ladakh, India,” Oral History Review 49, no. 1 (2022): 56 - 76 (with Stewart Weaver and Daniel Rinn)
• “The Politics of Trees: the Logging of Białowieża Forest and the Debate on Polish National Identity,” in E. Johann, J. Jusmin, J. Woitsch, eds., European Forests – Our Cultural Heritage (Prague: Nová Tiskárna Pelhřimov & Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, 2021): 121 - 136. 
• "Ecofeminism as Intersectional Pedagogy and Practice,” in Mapping Gendered Ecologies: Engaging with and Beyond Ecowomanism and Ecofeminism, eds. Melchor Hall and Gwyn Kwirk (New York: Lexington Books, 2021): 107 - 124.
• “Ecofeminism, Maternalism, and the Carnivalesque: The Spatial Politics of Women’s Environmental Movement in Poland,” Feminist Formations 33, no. 2 (2021): 79-105.
• “Forests in Revolutionary France: Conservation, Community, and Conflict, 1669 – 1848,” Book review, Environmental History (summer 2019).
• Mother of the Church: Sophia Svechina, the Salon, and the Politics of Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Russia and France  (University of Northern Illinois Press, 2016). Winner of 2018 Harry Koenig Book Award, American Catholic Historical Association
• “How Women Got the Vote,” Reviews in American History 44, no. 2 (2016): 291 - 298.
• Including Students in Academic Conversations:  Principles and Strategies for Teaching Theme-Based Writing Courses across the Disciplines (with Deborah Rossen-Knill) (Hampton Press, 2011)
• “Education in the United States” in American society: Essays on history and culture (St. Petersburg: University of St. Petersburg, 2008)
• “Russian Catholicism and the Collapse of the Ideals of the Enlightenment” in Nauka, Religiia i Obstchetvo: Sbornik Statei vol. 36 (2006): 84 – 99.  
• “Russian Catholicism in the First Quarter of 19th Century: New Look” in Religiovedenie (Study of Religion) 4 (2005): 30 – 41.