Laura Engelstein

Last updated
Laura Engelstein
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater Stanford University
OccupationHistorian
Known forContributions to the field of Russian studies

Laura Engelstein is an American historian who specializes in Russian and European history. [1] She serves as Henry S. McNeil Professor Emerita of Russian History at Yale University and taught at Cornell University and Princeton University. [2] Her numerous publications have included Moscow, 1905: Working-Class Organization and Political Conflict (1982); The Keys to Happiness: Sex and the Search for Modernity in Fin-de-Siecle Russia (1992); Castration and the Heavenly Kingdom: A Russian Folktale (1999); Slavophile Empire: Imperial Russia’s Illiberal Path (2009); and Russia in Flames: War, Revolution, Civil War, 1914–1921 (2017). [3] [4] In 2000, she co-edited an essay collection with Stephanie Sandler, Self and Story in Russian History. [3] A translation with Grazyna Drabik of Andrzej Bobkowski's Wartime Notebooks: France, 1940–1944, was released in November 2018. [3] Her research interests lie in the "social and cultural history of late imperial Russia, with attention to the role of law, medicine, and the arts in public life," as well as "themes in the history of gender, sexuality, and religion." [2] Shortly before fall 2014, Engelstein retired from her work as a professor at Yale University. [5]

Contents

Education

Engelstein studied in Moscow from 1973 to 1974, completing a stazhirovka. [5] She earned her Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1976 under Terence Emmons. [5]

Teaching career and publications

Following graduation, she accepted a position at Cornell University, the second woman to be hired by the History Department there. [5] While teaching at Cornell, Engelstein completed her first book, which "analyzed patterns of working-class behavior in the course of the revolution of 1905 in Moscow." [5] Moscow, 1905: Working-Class Organization and Political Conflict was published in 1982. [3]

Engelstein became a professor at Princeton University in 1985. [5] The same year, she began completing the research for her second book, The Keys to Happiness: Sex and the Search for Modernity in Fin-de-Siecle Russia, [5] which was published in 1992. [3]

On November 3, 2001, Engelstein accepted an offer to join the history faculty at Yale, where she served as Henry S. McNeil Professor Emerita of Russian History. [1]

Honors and awards

Engelstein's second book won the Wayne S. Vucinich Prize and shared the Heldt Prize. [5]

Engelstein has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the National Humanities Center, and the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. [3]

In 2010, she was named a Metro Berlin Prize Fellow by the American Academy in Berlin. [6]

Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History described Engelstein as one of "the most important figures in the field of Russian history" with an "incisive mind" and "analytical acuity," adding that she had "played a crucial role in enhancing our understanding of the complex interplay of social, cultural, intellectual, and political forces in the late imperial period." [5]

Retirement

Shortly before fall 2014, Engelstein retired from her position at Yale University. [5]

Related Research Articles

Lindsey Hughes was a British historian who studied seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Russia, especially the reign of Peter the Great. She wrote biographies of Peter and his predecessor Sophia Alekseyevna, as well as a more general work, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great. She also wrote prolifically on art history.

<i>Snokhachestvo</i> Type of sexual relation in the Russian Empire

In the Russian Empire, snokhachestvo referred to sexual relations between a pater familias (bolshak) of a Russian peasant household (dvor) and his daughter-in-law (snokha) during the minority or absence of his son.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Vernadsky</span> Russian-American historian (1887–1973)

George Vernadsky was a Russian-born American historian and an author of numerous books on Russian history.

Leopold Henri Haimson was a historian and professor at Columbia University.

Ronald Grigor Suny is an American historian and political scientist. Suny is the William H. Sewell Jr. Distinguished University Professor of History at the University of Michigan and served as director of the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies, 2009 to 2012 and was the Charles Tilly Collegiate Professor of Social and Political History at the University of Michigan from 2005 to 2015, and is Emeritus Professor of political science and history at the University of Chicago.

The Heldt Prize is a literary award from the Association for Women in Slavic Studies named in honor of Barbara Heldt. The award has been given variously in the following categories:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sheila Fitzpatrick</span> Australian historian

Sheila Mary Fitzpatrick is an Australian historian, whose main subjects are history of the Soviet Union and history of modern Russia, especially the Stalin era and the Great Purges, of which she proposes a "history from below", and is part of the "revisionist school" of Communist historiography. She has also critically reviewed the concept of totalitarianism and highlighted the differences between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in debates about comparison of Nazism and Stalinism.

Mark Bassin is a geographer and specialist on Russian and German geopolitics. He is currently employed as a professor in historical and contemporary studies at Södertörn University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marci Shore</span> American historian

Marci Shore is an American associate professor of intellectual history at Yale University, where she specializes in the history of literary and political engagement with Marxism and phenomenology.

Mark D. Steinberg is a historian, writer, and professor. He taught at Harvard University, Yale University, and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, from which he retired in 2021. He is the author of many books and articles on Russian history.

Mikhail Andreevich Reisner was a Russian and Soviet lawyer, jurist, writer, social psychologist and historian of Baltic German extraction. He was the father of writer Larissa Reisner and orientalist Igor Reisner, and adoptive father of naval officer and submariner Lev Reisner.

The Laura Shannon Prize in Contemporary European Studies is a $10,000 book prize sponsored by the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at the University of Notre Dame. The Laura Shannon Prize is awarded annually to the author of the "best book in European studies that transcends a focus on any one country, state, or people to stimulate new ways of thinking about contemporary Europe as a whole." "Contemporary" is construed broadly, and books about particular countries or regions have done well in the process so long as there are implications for the remainder of Europe. The prize alternates between the humanities and history/social sciences. Nominations are typically due at the end of January each year and may be made by either authors or publishers. The final jury selects one book as the winner each year and has the discretion to award honorable mentions.

Marc Raeff (1923–2008) was a specialist in Russian history who taught at Columbia University in New York, 1961–88. He held the Bakhmeteff chair in Russian Studies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yevdokiya Nagrodskaya</span> Russian novelist

Yevdokiya Nagrodskaya, was a Russian novelist in fin-de-siècle Russia whose first novel was titled The Wrath of Dionysus. Her debut novel was published in 1910 and explored the theme of her perception of "sexual identity and gender roles" of men and women in Russia. It was very popular in pre-revolutionary Russia among the middle-class people and was controversial. The novel was so popular that it was reprinted 10 times and translated into French, Italian and German. It was also made into a silent movie with erotic content.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Volf Bronner</span>

VolfMoiseevich Bronner (1876–1939) was a Russian Empire and Soviet physician, venereologist, and anti-syphilis campaigner who founded the State Venereological Institute in Moscow of which he became the director.

Arkadii Ivanovich Elistratov (1872-?) was professor of police law at Moscow University. In the 1910s he drafted laws to end the regulation of prostitution and to outlaw it instead.

The Alfonse pogrom was a three-day riot in Warsaw, Poland. The violence led to the destruction of several dozen brothels, and to as many as 15 deaths. Accounts and analyses of the event differ with regard to its goals and participants.

Barbara Heldt is an American emerita professor of Russian at the University of British Columbia. The Heldt Prize, a literary award in her name, was established by the Association for Women in Slavic Studies. She was a member of the editorial board of the series Cambridge Studies in Russian Literature. She is best known for her researches on Russian literature by women, the introduction of gender analysis and feminist perspectives into Slavic studies, and for her translation of Karolina Pavlova's novel A Double Life.

<i>Russia in Flames</i> History of the Russian Revolution and Civil War by Laura Engelstein

Russia in Flames: War, Revolution, Civil War, 1914–1921 is a narrative history of the Russian Revolution and Civil War, written by Laura Engelstein and published in 2017 by Oxford University Press. The release was timed with the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution.

Michael David-Fox is an American historian who studies modern Russia and the Soviet Union.

References

  1. 1 2 "History Department snags top Russian scholar Engelstein". yaledailynews.com. 27 November 2001. Retrieved 2016-04-14.
  2. 1 2 "Laura Engelstein". russian-studies.yale.edu. Russian Studies at Yale. Retrieved 2016-04-14.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Laura Engelstein". history.yale.edu. Yale Department of History. Retrieved 2016-04-14.
  4. Russia in Flames: War, Revolution, Civil War, 1914 - 1921. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. 2017-10-17. ISBN   9780199794218.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 "An Interview with Laura Engelstein". Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. 15 (4): 679–693. 2014. doi:10.1353/kri.2014.0054. Project MUSE   561891.
  6. "Laura Engelstein". American Academy in Berlin. Retrieved 2016-04-14.