Submissions wanted (Russian history, political science, cultural studies, etc.) | $200 per chapter

COMPANY/PUBLICATION: ADVANCED RUSSIAN THROUGH HISTORY

Deadline: 15 January 2024

Anna Alsufieva (Portland State University, Oregon, USA) and Benjamin Rifkin (Fairleigh Dickinson University, New Jersey, USA) invite scholars whose native language is Russian to contribute essays and mini-lectures to the 2nd edition of Advanced Russian through History to be published in 2025 by Georgetown University Press.

Scholars in the fields of History, Sociology, Political Science, Economics, Anthropology, and Cultural Studies are invited to participate. Scholars who are selected to participate in this project write one or more essays in Russian (and record the associated mini-lectures on the topics listed below) and will receive an honorarium of $200 per chapter (including the essay and the mini-lecture). The length of each essay is to be no more than 1500 words and the length of each mini-lecture is to be no longer than 5 minutes. Authors of the text should imagine that they are writing for students who may understand Russian fairly well but often do not know even the basics of Russian history. The students using this textbook will be non-native speakers of Russian who are university students; they will have studied Russian at the university level for at least three years before beginning their study with this textbook, but will not necessarily have studied European history, let alone the history of Russia and the lands and peoples it has conquered throughout its history.

Our goal is for the students using our textbook to learn how to understand Russian texts in the social science and humanities disciplines written in a scholarly register. We, the editors of the textbook, will provide pedagogical support for the students in the form of vocabulary glosses and pedagogical exercises.

In publishing the second edition of this textbook, we seek to decolonialize / decenter Russian history by expanding the range of topics as well as the range of authors’ perspectives. We want students working on their Russian language skills to understand the complex history of this country and its empire from multiple perspectives, not only from a perspective from the imperial center. You can see below that the list of topics for the texts and the mini-lectures we are seeking reflects this new approach.

Accordingly, we are particularly eager to work with scholars who are themselves Ukrainian, Belarusian, Georgian, Armenian, Azeri, Chechen, Kazakh, or from other non-Russian cultures that are now part of the Russian Federation (at least in part) or have been part of the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union, and whose perspectives on the history of this region of the world are informed by their own identities. We also invite Russian scholars to participate.

Альтернативный текст: Accordingly, we are interested in contributions from authors from the former Soviet republics (particularly from Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan) and representatives of other non-Russian cultures that are now part of the Russian Federation.

Because we will be paying an honorarium to the authors participating in this project, we cannot work with individuals who currently reside in the Russian Federation. Participating authors can live anywhere in the world where our publisher United States can legally send the payment of the honorarium, regardless of the author’s citizenship status. Refugees are particularly welcome to participate.

If you would like to read some sample texts and listen to sample mini-lectures from the first edition of Advanced Russian through History, click here.

To be considered for participation, please send the following materials:

• Curriculum vitae specifying your highest degree earned, the institution where you earned it and the field in which you earned it, as well as a list of your scholarly publications
• A short letter indicating your interest in one or more of the topics on the list, background information about your Russian-language skills (e.g., you studied in a Russian-speaking curriculum or university or you grew up in a Russian-speaking environment), how your personal background may be relevant to the topic you are interested in writing about (for instance a Ukrainian scholar who wants to write about Ukraine for our book), and anything else you think we might find relevant to your participation in this project
• A short sample of your scholarly writing in Russian (for instance, send us one scholarly article or give us the link to an article published on the web)

Send your materials to us at these emails by January 15, 2024:

• alsufiev@pdx.edu
• b.rifkin@fdu.edu

New Chapter and Mini-Lecture Topics (in Parentheses) for Advanced Russian through History - 2nd Edition

1. Competing Claims about Kievan Rus (Kievan Rus in Medieval Europe)

2. The Grand Duchy of Muscovy and the Mantle of Rus (Tatar Impact on Russian Culture and History)

3. Russian Imperial Expansion to the West (Russian Imperial Expansion to the East and Islam)

4. The Formation of the USSR and Nationalities Policy (Views of the USSR from One or More of the National Republics)

5. Stalin, Stalinism, and Terror (The Terror in Soviet Georgia)

6. Collectivization and the Holodomor in Ukraine (Ukraine under Stalin, Hitler, and again Stalin)

7. Focus on Kazakhstan (The Gulag)

8. World War II and the Soviet Union 1939-1945 (The Massacre at Katyń, Vlasov’s Army, and Soviet and Post-Soviet Russian Disinformation)

9. Dissent in the late USSR (Samizdat, Tamizdat, Magnitizdat, Vysotsky, the Chronicle of Current Events, Helsinki Watch, Refuseniks)

10. Soviet Culture of the Brezhnev Era, (Soviet Foreign Policy After Stalin: Hungary, Cuba, Africa, India, Prague Spring and the Protest on Red Square, and the Invasion of Afghanistan)

11. Cultural Repression in the USSR: Suppression of Ukrainian Culture and War between Armenia and Azerbaijan (Attempted Suppression of Uprisings in the Caucasus, the Baltics, and Elsewhere)

12. Gorbachev and the Reconsideration of History (Glasnost’ and Perestroika)

13. The Collapse of the USSR (Emergence of Independent Ukraine and Belarus)

14. Sociology of Islam in the Russian Federation (Russian Federation Relations with the newly independent Central Asian countries that were formerly Soviet republics)

15. The Yeltsin Presidency - Prikhvatizatsiia (The Two Chechen Wars)

16. Women in Post-Soviet Russia (Profile of Pussy Riot)

17. The Putin Presidency 2000-2008 (The Case of Khodorkovsky)

18. The Medvedev Presidency 2008-2012 (Russian Military Engagement in the Caucasus)

19. Repression in Belarus to 2022 (Sociology and Psychology of Repression and Dissent)

20. The Putin Presidency Since 2012 - Suppression of Independent Media, Consolidation of Wealth (The Cost of Dissent and Resistance in Putin’s Russia since 2000)

21. LGBTQ+ Rights in the Russian Federation under Putin (Russia Fomenting Dissent Abroad/Disinformation, e.g. Transnistria, Abkhazia, Interference in Domestic Politics in W. Europe and the US)

22. Russia’s War Against Ukraine 2014 - ? (Russian Popular Reaction to the Annexation of Crimea and the Full-Scale Invasion of Feb. 24, 2022: Social Divisions among the Population of the RF)

23. The War Against Ukraine after Feb. 2022 (Profile of Volodymyr Zelenskyy)

24. Russian Society Today (Russia and the World: China, Iran, North Korea, Europe, Africa, Latin America, and the US)

CONTACT INFORMATION (please do not share the email address publicly):

Questions/submissions: alsufiev@pdx.edu, b.rifkin@fdu.edu

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