Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies names fellows

The Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies has announced the recipients of its fellowships, prizes, dissertation completion grants, and research travel grants for 2004-05.

A total of five postdoctoral, regional, and senior fellowships have been awarded for research at Harvard in the humanities and social sciences on Russia and the Soviet successor states.

The postdoc recipients, including their affiliations and research projects, are Elena Campbell (Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, history) for “Toward State Unity: The ‘Muslim Question’ in Late Imperial Russia” and Alexandra Kirilcuk (Harvard, Slavic languages and literatures) for “Russian Émigré Poetry in Prague, 1920-1939.”

Regional fellowships have been awarded to Ilya Gerasimov (executive editor, “Ab Imperio”) for “Russians into Peasants? Paradoxes of the Public Modernization Campaign in the Countryside in Late Imperial Russia” and to Igor Nemirovsky (senior researcher, Institute of Russian Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences) for “Pushkin and Byron, 1827-1836.”

A senior fellowship was awarded to David Woodruff (associate professor, Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology) for “Negotiable Balance: Money and Corporate Stock between Law and Markets.”

A dissertation completion grant has been awarded to Anna Wexler Katsnelson (history of art and architecture) for “Aesopian Tales, or What Happened After 1927: The Late Russian Avant Garde, Painting, Film.”

Recipients of the Fainsod Prize, awarded to top incoming graduate students in the field of Russian, Soviet, or post-Soviet studies, include Masha Hedberg (government), who plans to study the institution-building process in Russia and surrounding countries, and how political systems and cultures develop new governing values; Eren Tasar (history), who intends to study the appearance and evolution of Islamic, Soviet, and national identities among Muslims in Soviet Central Asia; and Olga Voronina (Slavic languages and literatures), whose research will address 20th century Russian literature, especially the history of its successful development despite the establishment of a totalitarian regime in the 1920s.

Abby & George O’Neill Graduate Research Travel Grants were awarded to 21 students. The recipients, their departments or schools, research topics, and destinations are as follows:

Joseph Bednarek (Russian, East European, and Central Asian [REECA] studies) “Youth-oriented NGOs and Youth Sections of Ukrainian Political Parties,” Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv, and Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine.

Aleksey Berg (Slavic) “Viktor Krivulin’s Poetry and Biography: Archival Work and Interviews,” St. Petersburg, Moscow.

Ian Chesley (Slavic) “Fireworks Engravings from 18th Century Russia,” Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Fotini Christia (public policy) “Views of Active and Retired Military Personnel and Politicians (Bosniak, Croat, and Serb) on Interethnic Alliances during the 1992-95 War,” Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Daniel Epstein (government) “Regional Party Development in Voronezh and Chelyabinsk,” Voronezh and Chelyabinsk, Russia.

Petra Gelbart (music/ethnomusicology) “Modes of Presentation of Romany Music to non-Roma Children and the Effect of this Interaction on Interethnic Relations,” Moravia and Prague.

Hakyung Jung (Slavic) “Variation of the Past Gerund Suffix in Russian Dialects: The Geographical Distribution of Variants and the Spread of Innovations that Resulted in the Variants,” Moscow.

Jonathan Kregor (music) “Liszt’s Transcriptions,” Budapest, Hungary.

Kyongjoon Kwon (Slavic) “Integrative Explication of ‘North Russian Nominative Singular Masculine of o-Stem Desinence,” St. Petersburg.

Marina Levitina (REECA) “American and Soviet Film from the Cold War Period: Cultural Relations and Representations of One Another’s Culture,” Moscow.

Stanislav Markus (government) “Business Associations and Their Relations with the Government in Russia, Ukraine, and the Baltics,” Russia, Ukraine, and the Baltics.

Scarlet Marquette (Slavic) “Prevalence of Psychotic Texts in Russian Canonical Works,” Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Clara Masnatta (comparative literature) Croatian language study, Croatia.

Louisa McClintock (REECA) “Research and Interviews with the Memorial Society,” Moscow.

John Ondrovcik (history) “Banditry in Germany and Russia, 1918-1923,” Moscow.

Benjamin Paloff (Slavic) “Archival Research on Andrei Platonov, Karel Capek, and Vitezslav Nezval, Particularly Their Construction of Space and Time in Literature,” St. Petersburg and Prague.

Maya Peterson (REECA) “Local Environmental NGOs in Central Asia and How They Approach Environmental Crises,” Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

Dana Ponte (REECA) “Response of the Left-Wing Tatar Intelligentsia to Bolshevism,” Kazan, Tatarstan.

George Soroka (government) “Development of Civil Society in Russia,” Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other regions.

Emily Van Buskirk (Slavic) “Lydia Ginzburg’s Creative Process and the Development of Her Poetics of Self,” St. Petersburg.

Gergana Yankova (government) “Russian Public Tolerance for Corruption in the Past 10-15 Years, Media Content Analysis,” Russia.

Two graduate students were awarded Optimus Research Travel Grants for work in Poland. They are Anna Gessen (Slavic) “Archival Work on Memoirs of Anna Labzina; Representations of the Holocaust in Slavic Fiction,” St. Petersburg and Krakow; and Alex Spektor (Slavic) “Tolstoy and Gombrowicz,” Krakow.

One graduate student was awarded a REECA Alumni Research Travel Grant: Tanya Abrams (REECA) “Factors Contributing to the Durability of the Settlement of the Tajik War,” Dushanbe, Tajikistan.

Seven Harvard College students received Goldman Undergraduate Summer Travel Grants to carry out thesis research during the summer. Their names appear below, along with their concentration, topic of research, and destination.

Tatsiana Biazuhlava (government) “Examination of the Intermediate Status of Ukraine and Belarus between an Enlarging European Union and Russia,” Moscow, Minsk, Kiev, and Brussels.

Kristin Ceglar (history and literature) “Time and Nostalgia: A Comparative Study of Photographs Found in Nabokov’s ‘Speak Memory,’” Mentone, France, and St. Petersburg.

Marc Esserman (history) “How and Why Did the Soviet Union Develop a Chess Program?” Moscow.

Matthew Gibson (history and literature) “Archival Research on A.F. Vel’tman, Il’f & Petrov, Leskov, and Erofeev,” Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Brynn Jinnett (Russian literature and culture) “The Sovietization of ‘Romeo and Juliet,’” St. Petersburg.

Maria Konnikova (government) “The Role of Individuals in Governance and the Formation of Government Policy,” Tbilisi, Georgia.

Svetlana Meyerzon (history and Russian studies) “The Political and Social Basis for Elite Durability in Kazakhstan from the Brezhnev Era to the Present,” Moscow.