Davis Center announces award winners

The Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies has announced the recipients of fellowships, prizes, research travel grants, and internships for 2007-08.

A total of five fellowships have been awarded for research at Harvard in the humanities and social sciences on Russia and the Soviet successor states. The postdoctoral fellows, including their affiliations and research projects, are Mikhail Berg (independent researcher) for a study on the Russian underground from Soviet times to the present; Cynthia Hooper (assistant professor at the College of the Holy Cross) for research on collaboration and coercion in Soviet power; and Anna Wexler Katsnelson (Ph.D. candidate in the history of art and architecture, Harvard) for work on the visual culture of late Russian avant-garde.

Margarita Pavlov (senior scholar at the Institute of Russian Literature, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg) was awarded a senior fellowship for research on the idea of “new religious consciousness” and its realization in the neo-Christian commune of the Merezhkovsky circle.

Valentina Apresjan (senior researcher at the Institute of Russian Language, Moscow) was awarded a regional fellowship for a project on Russian emotions from a linguistic perspective.

Dissertation completion fellowships have been awarded to Daniel Epstein (government) for his comparative study of the institutionalization of political party systems at the regional level in Russia and Brazil, and to Elina Treyger (government) for her dissertation on rule of law development in post-Soviet politics.

Fainsod Prizes, intended for top incoming graduate students in the field of Russian, Soviet, or post-Soviet studies, were awarded to Oliver Bevan (government), whose research interests concern the economic changes in Central Europe and the former Soviet Union; Debra Caplan (Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations), whose interests center on dramatic theatrical trends in Yiddish, Russian, Hebrew, and Western European theaters; Devon Dear (inner Asian and Altaic studies), who intends to study Muslim communities in China; Sofiya Grachova (history), whose research will explore the process of nationalization of local history narratives in Ukraine; and Natalie Koch (regional studies: Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia), who plans to study forced migration in post-Communist Europe.

A total of 22 graduate students received research travel grants from the Davis Center with support from the Abby and George O’Neill Fund for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard, the Maurice Lazarus Fund, the Regional Studies Alumni Travel and Prize Fund, and the Padma Desai Research Prize.

The recipients, including their departments or schools, research topics, and destinations, are as follows:

Johanna Conterio (history): “A Soviet Paradise: Health Resorts, Nerves, and Kurortologia in the Proletarian State,” Moscow, Yalta, Sochi

Coco Downey (REECA): “Domestic Determinants of Russia’s Foreign Policy Towards China,” Moscow

Anders Engberg-Pedersen (comparative literature): “Epistemic Uncertainty: Knowledge and Narrative in the 19th Century,” Moscow

Masha Hedberg (government): “Pawns, Puppet Masters, or Partners? A Comparative Analysis of Post-Socialist Oligarchs and State-Business Relations,” Armenia, Georgia

Matthew Herrington (Slavic): “Slavonic Hagiographies in the Age of the Printed Book,” Moscow

Hakyung Jung (Slavic): “In Search of Empirical Evidence for Argument Structure in the Possessive Perfect Construction in North Russian,” Moscow

Kyongjoon Kwon (Slavic): “Evidence for the Grammaticalization of Nominative Singular Ending -e in Old Novgorod Dialect,” Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novgorod

Victoria Levin (public policy): “Privileged No More? The Consequences of Entitlement Monetization in Russia,” Moscow

Hassan Malik (history): “The Development of the Russian/Soviet Oil and Gas Industry,” Moscow

Stanislav Markus (government): “The Neglected Roots of Capitalism: Corporate Political Alliances as Property Rights Insurance,” Moscow

Inna Mattei (Slavic): “Before They Were Ruins: On the Poetics of Late Soviet Culture,” Moscow, Kiev

Mladen Nesic (REECA): “International Competition and National Sensibilities in Eurovision,” Moscow, Kiev, Prague

Maya Peterson (history): “An Environmental History of Central Asia in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries,” Moscow, Central Asia

Laura Pop (REECA): “Judicial Reform in Romania and Kazakhstan,” Romania, Kazakhstan

Maxim Pozdorovkin (Slavic): “Sergei Parajanov and the Soviet Film Studios: Works Lost in the Conflict,” Armenia

Mikhail Pryadilnikov (government): “Regulatory Reform in Russia, 2001-2006: Regional Implementation Outcomes,” Rostov, Tver, Moscow

Noah Tucker (REECA): “After Andijon: Uzbekistan’s Shifting Alliances,” Uzbekistan

Emily Van Buskirk (Slavic): “The Crisis of the Novel in the Soviet Context: Lydia Ginzburg’s Prose Experiments,” St. Petersburg, Moscow

Olga Voronina (Slavic): “Cold War Subtext in Akhmatova’s ‘Poem Without a Hero,’” St. Petersburg, Moscow

Xiyue Wang (REECA): “Sufi Practice in Contemporary Central Asia and Its Political Implications,” Uzbekistan, Tajikistan

Gergana Yankova (government): “Who Is Governing Between Elections? A Comparative Exploration of Government Accountability and Media Scandals,” Germany, Bulgaria

Almira Zakiyeva (REECA): “The Role of the Smaller Powers in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization,” Kazakhstan

Nine Harvard College students received Goldman Undergraduate Research Travel Grants for senior thesis research during summer 2007.

The recipients, including their departments or schools, research topics, and destinations, are as follows:

Sakura Christmas (history): “Japanese Colonial Policy towards Russian Refugees and Indigenous Peoples in Manchuria (1900-1945),” China, Russia, Japan

Rebecca Gong (social studies): “The Use of International Law for and against the 2006 Deportations of Georgians from Moscow,” Moscow

Sara Kate Heukerott (Slavic): “Anna Karenina in St. Petersburg,” St. Petersburg

Samuel Hodgkin (Near Eastern languages and civilizations): “Populist Poets and Historians in Russian Imperial Qoqand and Bukhara,” Tajikistan

Robert Jellinek (government): “Outsourcing Justice: Russia and the European Court of Human Rights,” Russia

Paul Linden-Retek (social studies): “An Examination of Vaclav Havel’s Political Thought,” Prague

Antonio Lupher (history and literature): “Resurrecting Gogol: The Influence of Nikolai Gogol on Russian Literature and Performing Arts in the 1920s and 1930s,” Russia

Anton Troianovski (social studies): “The New Generation of Russian Journalists after the Fall of Communism,” Moscow

Maya Tsukernik (economics and mathematics): “The Effects of Stalin’s 1936-1955 Abortion Ban on Soviet Mothers and Children,” Russia

Finally, the Andrei Sakharov Program on Human Rights has awarded four summer internships to Harvard College students to work in human rights organizations in Russia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Nira Gautam (psychology) will work at the Kazan Human Rights Center in Kazan, Russia.

Susanne Frederica Stahl (history and science) will work at AIDS Knowledge Hub in Moscow.

Silvia Suteu (government and Near Eastern languages and civilizations) will work at the Research and Documentation Center in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Anna Whittington (history) will work at the Research Center of the Memorial Society, St. Petersburg.