People

People

Director MICHAEL D. GORDIN is an associate professor and Jonathan Edwards Bicentennial Preceptor in the Department of History. Gordin’s interests include history of the modern science, especially in Russia and the Soviet Union. He is the author of A Well-Ordered Thing: Dmitrii Mendeleev and the Shadow of the Periodic Table (2004) and Five Days in August: How World War II Became a Nuclear War (2007) and is currently finishing a book on the development of the Soviet atomic bomb, Red Cloud at Dawn (forthcoming). Ph.D. Harvard University.
Program Manager AUDREY MAINZER 210B Aaron Burr Hall 609.258.5978
Faculty
	LEONARD BABBY is a professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. His interest include structure and history of Russian, Old Russian, Serbo-Croation, syntactic theory, language universals, and Turkish linguistics. Ph.D. Harvard University.
	MARGARET H. BEISSINGER, research scholar and teaches in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. Her interests include oral epic, Balkan oral traditions, Romani (Gypsy) traditions and culture, gender issues in Balkan literature and traditional culture, and South Slavic and Romanian languages. Ph.D. Harvard University.
	MARK R. BEISSINGER is a research scholar and teaches in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. Her interests include oral epic, Balkan oral traditions, Romani (Gypsy) traditions and culture, gender issues in Balkan literature and traditional culture, and South Slavic and Romanian languages. Ph.D. Harvard University.
	KSANA BLANK is a lecturer in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. Her interests include nineteenth-century Russian prose, Russian religious thought, oriental philosophy, and interdisciplinary approaches to literature. Ph.D. Columbia University.
	ELLEN CHANCES, *72 is a professor of Russian literature and culture in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. Her interests include nineteenth- , twentieth-, and twenty-first-century Russian novel; contemporary Soviet and post-Soviet Russian literature and culture; Dostoevsky; Kharms; Chekhov; the interdisciplinary study of literature in its historical context; literature and ideas; literature and values; literature and cinema; comparative Russian and American literature and culture. Ph.D. Princeton University.
	CARYL EMERSON is the Watson Armour III University Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and Comparative Literatures. Her research interests include Mikhail Bakhtin, Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, the context and relevance of literary and cultural criticism, and most recently, the adaptation of Russian literary classics to the Soviet-era stage. Ph.D. University of Texas at Austin.
	HERMAN ERMOLAEV is professor emeritus of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. His interests include Soviet literature, Russian literature of the nineteenth century, the Russian novel and short story, Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn, and Sholokhov. Ph.D. University of California at Berkeley.
	DEVIN FOREis an assistant professor in the Department of German and an affiliate faculty member of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. His interests include Russian Modernism in literature and the visual arts; avant-garde documentary; and Formalist poetics. Ph.D. Columbia University.
	ERIKA H. GILSON is a senior lecturer in the Department of Near Eastern Studies. Her interests include Turkic languages, language acquisition, instructional technology, and language learning. Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania.
	IRENA GRUDZINSKA GROSS is an associate research scholar in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. Her interests include East European literature and history, especially poetry and politics. Ph.D. Columbia University.
	JAN GROSS is the Norman B. Tomlinson ’16 and ’48 Professor of War and Society in the Department of History. His interests include comparative politics, totalitarian and authoritarian regimes of modern Europe, Soviet and East European politics, and the Holocaust. Ph.D. Yale University.
	M. SÜKRÜ HANIOGLU is chair of the Department of Near Eastern Studies and director of Program in Near Eastern Studies. His research interests include late Ottoman diplomatic history, late Ottoman history, and Turkish political life. Ph.D. Istanbul University.
	OLGA PETERS HASTY is a professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. Her interests include nineteenth-century Russian poetry, Russian post-symbolist poetry, formalism, the Russian avant-garde, Nabokov, émigré literature, and Russian drama. Ph.D. Yale University.
	DEBORAH KAPLE *91 is a research scholar and lecturer in the Department of Sociology. Her interests include Chinese-Soviet comparative studies, socialist economics, the Stalin period, and the Gulag..Ph.D. Princeton University.
	STEPHEN KOTKIN is the Rosengarten Professor of Modern and Contemporary History with a joint appointment as professor of international affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School. His interests include authoritarianism, world history and politics, empire, the avant-garde and dictatorship, global cities, as well as Russia, Asia, and Europe.Ph.D. University of California–Berkeley.
	SIMON MORRISON *97 is a professor in the Department of Music. His interests include nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian music, ballet, and film music. Ph. D. Princeton University.
	SERGUEI OUSHAKINE is an assistant professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and associate faculty in the Department of Anthropology. His interests include ethnography of Eurasia; contemporary Russian culture; everyday socialism; popular nationalism and theories of nationhood; and trauma, memory, and identification. Ph.D. Columbia University.
	PETRE PETROV is an assistant professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. His interests include Soviet modernism, socialist realism, Stalinist culture, and Russian and Soviet critical theory. He teaches Polish language and courses on twentieth-century Russian literature and culture. Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh.
	GRIGORE POP-ELECHES is an assistant professor of politics and international affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. His interests include postcommunist democratization and economic reforms; communist and precommunist legacies; and elections and political parties (especially populist and extremist parties). Ph.D. University of California-Berkeley.
	EKATERINA PRAVILOVA is an assistant professor in the Department of History. Her interests include the legal relationship between the individual and the Russian absolutist state; the history of Russian imperialism and resource distribution; tax policies; and imperial currencies. Ph.D. St. Petersburg Institute of History, Russian Academy of Sciences.
	PETER QUIMBY is deputy dean of the College and oversees the undergraduate curriculum. In addition to overseeing the work of the Princeton Writing Program and the McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning, he serves as director of both the Freshman Seminar Program and of the Community-Based Learning Initiative. His interests include post-Soviet politics and church-state relations in Russia and Ukraine. Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison.
	MICHAEL REYNOLDS *03 is an assistant professor in the Department of Near Eastern Studies. His interests include interactions between the Ottoman and Russian empires, the North Caucasus, Islamic mysticism, international relations, and the intersection between the study of history and social scientific theories and methods. Ph.D. Princeton University.
	GILBERT ROZMAN *71 is the Musgrave Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology. His interests include comparisons, relations, and perceptions of China, Japan, Russia, and Korea; regionalism in Northeast Asia, and strategic thought in the various states of the region. Ph.D. Princeton University.
	KIM LANE SCHEPPELE is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School and the University Center for Human Values as well as the director of the Program in Law and Public Affairs at Princeton. She is also a faculty fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Her interests include comparative constitutional law in postsocialist countries; socialist legality; the development of postsocialist legal institutions and popular legal consciousness; and Hungarian political and legal culture. Ph.D. University of Chicago.
	NINA GORKY SHAPIRO, is a Slavic bibliographer. Her interests include bibliographic and authority control, bibliographic instruction, and contemporary book publishing and trade. Ph.D. Moscow State University.
	STANISLAV SHVABRIN is a lecturer in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. His interests include Slavic languages and language acquisition, cultural legacy of Russian diasporas, Russian Modernism, literary translation, and comparative literary studies. Ph.D. University of California, Los Angeles.
	MICHAEL WACHTEL is a professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. His interests include Russian literature, comparative literature, and poetics. Ph.D. Harvard University.
	FRANK VON HIPPEL is a professor of public and international affairs at the, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and codirector of the Program on Science and Global Security. His interests include developing the analytical basis for deep cuts in the U.S. Soviet/Russian nuclear stockpiles and removal of their ballistic missiles from launch-on-warning alert; verified nuclear-warhead elimination; a comprehensive nuclear-warhead test ban; and ending production, minimizing use, and disposing of excess weapons-useable fissile materials. Ph.D. Oxford University, 1962.

Past Faculty

Past members of the faculty include Joachim Baer, Nina Berberova, Cyril Black, Jerome Blum, James Billington, Clarence Brown, Richard Burgi, Stephen F. Cohen, Laura Engelstein, George Florovsky, Joseph Frank, Allen Kassof, A. James McAdams, S. Frederick Starr, Robert Tucker, John Turkevich, Laura Tyson, Charles Townsend, William Wohlforth, and Richard Wortman, among others.

Alumni

Undergraduate Certificate Recipients

Master of Arts

Ph.D.