EDUCATION

PhD   University of California, Berkeley, History  2020

MA    University of California, Berkeley, History      2015

BA     Brown University, History and Slavic Studies (honors)     2010

books and monographs

A Survivor’s Education: Women, Violence, and the Stories We Don’t Tell (PublicAffairs, 2024)

Dying Empire: Visions of the End in Late Socialism (PhD dissertation completed at UC Berkeley, 2020)

PEER-Reviewed PUBLICATIONS

“Leonid Brezhnev and the Elixir of Life.” In Energy Culture: Work, Power, and Waste in Russia and the Soviet Union, ed. Jillian Porter and Maya Vinokour, Springer Nature, 2023

“Darkness at Noon: On History, Narrative, and Domestic Violence.” The American Historical Review, June 2021

“Late Socialism as a Time of Weeping: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Vladimir Vysotsky.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, summer 2021

“Patriarchal Primitivism: Dying Peasant Women and the Soviet Anti-Developmental Turn.” View: Theories and Practices of Visual Culture, summer 2021

Fellowships and AWARDS

2022 Kennan Institute Short-Term Fellow, Woodrow Wilson Center

2020 Friends of Cal History Dissertation Prize for the department’s best dissertation, UC Berkeley

2020 Max Weber Fellow, European University Institute, Florence

2020 Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Graduate Essay Prize, UC Berkeley

2019 Mabelle McLeod Lewis Memorial Fund Dissertation Fellowship

2019 Allan Sharlin Memorial Fellowship, UC Berkeley

2019 Visiting Scholar at the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia, New York University

2018    American Councils Academic Fellowship in Russia, Carnegie Corporation

2018    Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Summer Research Fellowship, UC Berkeley

2017    Stephen F. Cohen-Robert C. Tucker Dissertation Research Fellowship

2016    Association for Women in Slavic Studies Graduate Essay Prize

2015    Western Association of Slavic Studies Outstanding Graduate Student Essay Prize

2015    Gurevich Memorial Prize in Russian History, University of California, Berkeley

2014    Berkeley Fellowship for Graduate Study, University of California, Berkeley

2010    Fulbright Scholarship, U.S. Department of State

2010    Marjorie Harris Weiss Memorial Premium for the outstanding undergraduate woman majoring in History, Brown University

2010    Yegen History Department Prize for Outstanding Honors Thesis, Brown University

2009    Helen Terry MacLeod Research Grant for Teaching and Research on Women, Brown University

2009    Elected to Phi Beta Kappa as a Junior, Rhode Island Alpha of the Phi Beta Kappa Society

2008    Kenneth A. Greif Prize for Distinguished Work in Shakespeare, Brown University

 

Writing and Editing

2010-present  Freelance Writer and Editor

  • feature stories and reviews for publications including The New York Times, Foreign Policy, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, ARTnews, Women’s Wear Daily, Vice, CNNGo, Tablet Magazine, Russian Life, The Moscow Times, Russia Beyond the Headlines, Modern Farmer, Cat Fancy, Calvert Journal, LA Review of Books

2017-2018 Podcast host for New Books Network

  • scheduled, recorded, and wrote up interviews with authors of new books in Russian and Eurasian Studies

2015   Writer for Berkeley Social Science Matrix

  • wrote articles about research in the social sciences at Berkeley based on research and interviews with faculty and graduate students

2011-2014  Editor and Reporter at The Moscow News

  • wrote weekly feature stories; commissioned and edited articles; wrote and filmed videos for “Moscow Walks” series

2007-2010  Head Fellow at Brown University Writing Fellows Program

  • worked with 10-12 students to improve their writing each semester, managed Writing Fellows assigned to each class 

2009  Intern at Rodnoi Gorod, Iaroslavl', Russia

  • assisted with production of Russian-language city newspaper

2008-2009  Features Editor at The College Hill Independent, Brown University

  • wrote, assigned, and edited stories for campus independent newspaper 

2007-2008   Staff Writer and Copy Editor at the Brown Daily Herald, Brown University

  • wrote and copy-edited articles for campus newspaper 

 

Research

2010-2011   Fulbright Scholar at the Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow

  • pursued research project on private life in the late Soviet era; performed coursework in language, literature, and gender studies 

2010   Research Assistant at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

  • conducted research in Soviet documents for Senior Scholar Sam Wells 

2009   Research Assistant at the National Security Archive

  • catalogued Russian documents, completed research on the Moscow Helsinki Group 

2009   Research Assistant at Brown University Department of History 

  • research in Russian documents at the Library of Congress for Professor Ethan Pollock 

 

SELECTED presentations

2020    “Modernity as Melancholy: The History of Emotions in the Late Soviet Union.” Talk presented at the European University Institute, Florence.  

2020    “A Joyful Tragedy. Viktor Popkov’s Workers and Widows in Late Soviet Culture.” Presented at the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, Washington DC.

2019 Leonid Brezhnev and the Elixir of Life. Presented at the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Conference, San Francisco

2019 Eurydice’s Return: Anna German and Estrada in the Eastern Bloc. Presented at the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Summer Conference, Zagreb

2018 Visions of the End in Late Socialism. Presented at the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Conference, Boston

2017   Decline and Fall in the Fourth Rome. Presented at the International Forum for Young Scholars of Soviet and Post-Soviet History and Culture, Higher School of Economics, Moscow

2016   ‘It’s Hard to Live to the End of the Line’: Brezhnev, Vysotsky, and Death in Developed Socialism. Presented at the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, Washington DC

2016   Faces of Death: Soviet Immortality in Plaster. Presented at Scientific Utopias in the Soviet Union conference, L'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris

2015   ‘The Final Struggle’: The Art of the Soviet Death Mask. Presented at the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, Philadelphia, PA

2015   The Death of Parmesan: Material Culture, Media, and the Past in Russian Everyday Life. Presented at Florida International University

2015   ‘The Final Struggle’: The Art of the Soviet Death Mask. Presented at the Western Association for Slavic Studies conference, Portland, OR

 

teaching

Spring 2021   Research seminar for PhD students at EUI. Co-taught with Alexander Etkind

                      Max Weber Program teacher certification. Includes teaching workshops for masters students at Masaryk University

Spring 2017   History of the Soviet Union. Taught two weekly one-hour sections.

Fall 2016        US Social History from 1865 to the Present. Grading and tutorials.

Spring 2016    Staging the American City: A Cultural History of Broadway. Taught two weekly one-hour sections.

Fall 2015         History of Science. Taught two weekly two-hour sections. 

 

Service and leadership

2021      Organizing committee for Max Weber June Conference

2020 Volunteer at New York Cares

2016-2017   Graduate student speaker at the Office of Resources for International and Area Studies (ORIAS) at UC Berkeley

2015-2016   Co-organizer of the Berkeley Russian History Working Group (kruzhok)

2015   Writing Coach at WriterConnect; mentored eighth-grade students at Willard Middle School in Berkeley, CA

2009   Volunteer at Doverie (NGO for families and children), Iaroslavl', Russia

 

languages

Russian (fluent), Polish (advanced), French (reading)