Program

ACLS Fellowship Program, 2020

Project

Four Days that Shook the World: Earthquakes and Empire Along the Eurasian Frontier

Department

History and Middle East Studies

Abstract

This study explores the intertwined seismic and social histories of Central Eurasia. I use several major earthquakes—with their attendant drama and social, cultural, political, and economic consequences—to gain a fresh perspective on the Russo-Soviet empire. The resulting book is built around four traumatic episodes, all located in or near urban centers of the imperial periphery: Almaty, Kazakhstan (1887); Ashgabat, Turkmenistan (1948); Tashkent, Uzbekistan (1966); and Spitak, Armenia (1988). These cataclysmic events are the spine of a new, sweeping history of the empire, one that brings together colonial, environmental, cultural, and urban history, as well as the history of science.

Program

Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellowships, 2003

Project

Veiled Empire: Gender and Power in Stalinist Central Asia

Department

History