Areas of Interest
Russia and the Soviet Union.
Germany.
European Intellectual and Cultural History.
Historiography.
World History.
Interdisciplinary methods.

Publications
• "In the forge of Criticism: M. T. Kachenovskii and Professional Autonomy in Pre-Reform 
   Russia," in Historiography of Imperial Russia: The Profession and Writing of History in a 
   Multinational State. Edited by Thomas Sanders. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1999.
• "Social Identity and Russian Cultural Politics: Defining the Historian in the Pre-Reform 
   Era."  Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1998.

Selected Honors
• Teaching Fellowship, Introduction to the Humanities, Stanford University, 1998-2005.
• Whiting Fellowship in the Humanities, 1993-1994.
• Mazour Fellowship, Stanford University, 1992.
• Travel Grant and Stipend, Stanford Center for Russian and East European Studies/Institute 
  of Russian History  Exchange Program, October, 1992.

Biography
I joined the faculty of San Jose State University in the Spring of 2005.  I am currently teaching the two-semester series in Russian and Soviet history, as well as European Intellectual and Social History.

I am originally from Columbus, Ohio, and went to college at Yale University.  At Yale, I majored in Philosophy. My junior year, I took a course in Russian literature in translation and became fascinated with Russian culture. After college, I traveled to Russia often, and then settled down to studying Russian history at Stanford University.

In my doctoral dissertation, "Social Identity and Russian Cultural Politics: Defining the Historian in the Pre-Reform Era," I reconsider the impact of Russia's encounter with modernity by examining elite identity in the first half of the nineteenth century. I analyze the changing self-representations of three Moscow University historians. I conclude that their careers suggest that attitudes towards modernity, far from fracturing educated Russian society, actually served as a source of cohesion. I am currently reworking my dissertation for publication.

After Graduate school, I taught in Stanford's Introduction to Humanities Program for freshman. There I had the opportunity to teach interdisciplinary courses, with subjects ranging from Russian culture, to ancient and modern art and philosophy, to philosophical and anthropological perspectives on mortality. From this experience, I developed a particular interest in the ways that other disciplines can enrich discussions of "history," In my courses at San Jose State, I include art, architecture, literature, film, etc., encouraging students to explore the past from many angles.