Christine D. Worobec

Board of Trustees Professor and Distinguished Research Professor

Fields of Study:  
Modern Europe (Russia and Ukraine), Agrarian Societies, Gender, Sexuality and Women, Nationalism and Identity; Religion

E-mail: worobec@niu.edu
Phone: 815-753-6821
Office: Zulauf 702

Education: Ph.D., University of Toronto, 1984

Current Research:

I have embarked on a long-term project entitled "Moving Faith: Pilgrimages in Modern Russia and Ukraine."  Supported by a 2006 NEH Fellowship, this interdisciplinary study, involving cultural, social, and gender analysis, will examine Orthodox pilgrimages to holy sites within Russia and Ukraine as well as abroad from 1700 to the present.

Major/Recent Publications:      

•  “The Unintended Consequences of a Surge in Orthodox Pilgrimages in Late Imperial Russia,"Russian History 36 (2009): 62-76. Edited The Human Tradition in Imperial Russia(Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009).
• Co-edited with Mary Zirin, Irina Livezeanu, and June Pachuta-Farris, Women and Gender in Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, and Eurasia: A Comprehensive Bibliography, 2 vols. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2007).        
• “Miraculous Healings,” in Sacred Stories: Religion and Spirituality in Modern Russian Culture, edited by Mark Steinberg and Heather Coleman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 22-43.
• “Death Ritual among Russian and Ukrainian Peasants: Linkages between the Living and the Dead,” in Letters from Heaven: Popular Religion in Russia and Ukraine, edited by John-Paul Himka and Andriy Zayarnyuk (Toronto: University of Toronto, 2006), 13-45. A reprint of a book chapter that contains a new “Postscript,” 31-36, 43-45.
• Possessed: Women, Witches, and Demons in Imperial Russia (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2001). Issued in paperback in October 2003.
• Peasant Russia: Family and Community in the Post-Emancipation Period (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991). Reprinted in paperback with a new preface by Northern Illinois University Press, 1995.
• Russia's Women: Accommodation, Resistance, Transformation, ed. with Barbara Evans Clements and Barbara Alpern Engel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).

Teaching Interests:

As a social and cultural historian I infuse all my classes with information about peasant societies, women, gender, everyday life, popular religion, and class issues. I particularly enjoy teaching historical methods and more specialized classes in Russian history as well as the survey in modern European women’s history.

Courses Taught:

• HIST 171  The World Since 1500
• HIST 322  Women in Modern Europe
• HIST 326  19th Century Europe
• HIST 336  Medieval Russia: Origins to 1682
• HIST 337  History of Russia: 1682-1917
• HIST 338  History of Russia: 1917 to the present
• HIST 391  Historical Methods
• HIST 434  The Russian Revolution
• HIST 640/670  Women and Gender in Modern Europe and Russia
• HIST 640/670  Agrarian Societies in Europe and Russia
• HIST 640/670  Popular Religion in Modern Europe and Russia

Link to CV