Christine D. Worobec
Board of Trustee 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: In addition to working on a biography of St. Serafim of Sarov, 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:
- 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, vol. II: Russia, the Non-Russian Peoples of the Russian Federation, and the Successor States of the Soviet Union (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, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 2001). Issued in paperback in October 2003.
- "Celebration of the Summer Solstice Among the East Slavic Peasants of the Nineteenth-Century Russian Empire," in Rossiiskaia istoricheskaia mozaika: Sbornik nauchnykh statei/Russian Historical Mosaic: Collection of Scientific Articles, ed. by A. L. Litvin (Kazan: Kazanskoe matematicheskoe obshchestvo, 2003), 91-103. (A Festschrift for John Keep, Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto).
- "Conceptual Observations on the Russian and Ukrainian Peasantries," in Culture, Nation, and Identity: The Ukrainian-Russian Encounter (1600-1945), ed. by Andreas Kappeler, Zenon E. Kohut, Frank E. Sysyn, and Mark von Hagen (Edmonton, Alta.: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2003), 256-76.
- “Masculinity in Late Imperial Russian Peasant Society,” in Russian Masculinities in History and Culture, ed. by Barbara Evans Clements, Rebecca Friedman, and Dan Healy (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave, 2002), 76-93.
- 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 the surveys and more specialized classes in Russian History as well as the survey in modern European women’s history. Down the road I would like to offer special topics courses in comparative witchcraft and popular religion in a global context.
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 Present
- HIST 391 Historical Methods
- HIST 434 The Russian Revolution
- HIST 540/570 Women in Modern Europe and Russia
- HIST 540/570 Agrarian Societies in Europe and Russia
- HIST 540/570 Popular Religion in Modern Europe and Russia
Link to CV | Link to Personal Webpage
