CURRICULUM VITAE
Robert W. Thurston
Home Address
211 North Ridge Drive, Oxford, Ohio 45056 Telephone: (513) 523-0552 cell: (513) 328-7062
Office Address
Department of History Miami University Oxford, Ohio 45056
e-mail : thurstrw@muohio.edu telephone: (513) 529-5136 or -5121
fax (513) 529-3224
Education
Ph.D. in Modern Russian History, University of Michigan, 1980
M.A. in Modern Russian History, University of Michigan, 1975
B.A. in History, Northwestern University, 1971
Languages
Russian, French, German, Ukrainian (reading), Spanish (reading), Polish (minimal reading knowledge)
Employment
2004-: Phillip R. Shriver Professor of History, Miami University
1996-: Professor, Miami University
1990-1996: Associate Professor, Miami University
1987-1990: Assistant Professor, Miami University
1983-1987: Assistant Professor, University of Texas at El Paso
1981-83: Visiting Assistant Professor, University of California, San Diego
1980-81: Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Vermont
Academic Grants and Awards
2001: Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Program (Senior research) award, in conjunction with an Individual Advanced Research Opportunity award from the International Research and Exchanges Board for research in Ukraine and Russia
1998-1999: Grant to Promote Research and Scholarship; Summer Research Appointment, both Miami University
1992-93: Award from the American Council of Learned Societies (in conjunction with the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst ) for a collaborative German-American project on “Popular Response to World War II in the Soviet Union,” a workshop and book of articles
National Endowment for the Humanities Travel to Collections Grant
International Research and Exchanges Board Grant for Independent Short-term Research
1991: Short-term grant for research, the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars
1989: Grant to Promote Research and Scholarship; Summer Research Appointment, both Miami University
Fellow, Harvard University Russian Research Center (summer)
International Research and Exchanges Board Grant for research in the USSR
1986 (summer): Fellow, Harvard University Russian Research Center
Research Grant from the American Philosophical Society
1985: National Endowment for the Humanities Travel to Collections Grant
Research Grant from the Center for Slavic and East European Studies, The Ohio State University
“Mini-grant” for research, University of Texas at El Paso
1984: “Mini-grant” for research, University of Texas at El Paso
University Research Grant, University of Texas at El Paso
1981: Visiting Grant, Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars
1978-79: Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship
International Research and Exchanges Board grant for doctoral dissertation research in the USSR
Scholarly Publications
Monographs:
The Witch Hunts: A History of the Witch Persecutions in Europe and North America , London, Pearson Education, 2007. A revised edition of Witch, Wicce, Mother Goose. Polish translation as Polowania na Czarownice ,Warsaw: Panstwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 2008.
Witch, Wicce, Mother Goose: The Rise and Fall of the Witch Hunts in Europe and North America, London, Longman Publishers, 2001. A selection of the British Book Club. Greek translation, Athens: Papazissis Press, 2006.
Life and Terror in Stalin’s Russia, 1934-1941 , New Haven, Yale University Press, 1996. An alternate selection of the History Book Club. Paper edition 1998.
Liberal City, Conservative State: Moscow and Russia's Urban Crisis, 1906-1914, New York, Oxford University Press, 1987.
Edited Books:
The People’s War: Popular Response to World War II in the Soviet Union, Urbana, IL, University of Illinois Press, 2000. Co-editor with Bernd Bonwetsch, translator of three articles.
Articles:
“A Gallery of Coffee Advertising” with “A Brief, Brief History of Coffee Advertising in America,” Roast Magazine, May-June 2009.
“What Can a Professor of History Give Back to the World of Coffee?” The Specialty Coffee Chronicle, September/October 2008.
“The World, The Flesh and the Devil (Robert W. Thurston looks at the politics of demonology and rethinks attitudes to witches and women between 1400 and 1700),” History Today , 56, no. 11 (November 2006).
“Moscow,” in Encyclopedia of Europe, 1789-1914 , New York, Scribner’s/Thomson Publishing, 2006.
“Proof, problem of,” in Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition , ed. Richard Golden, Santa Barbara, Calif., ABC-CLIO, 2006.
“Problemy byta i identichnosti v imperatorskoi Rossii i SShA ( konets XIX- nachalo XX vv.” [Problems of Everyday Life and Identity in Imperial Russia and the U.S., late nineteenth-early twentieth centuries ], Visnik kharkivs’kogo natsional'nogo Universitety im . V. N. Karazina [Report of Khar’kov National University named after V. N. Karazin ] 37, no. 701, 2005.
“Coffee,” in France and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History, edited by Bill Marshall, Santa Barbara, Calif., ABC-CLIO, 2005.
“The Spawning of Satan,” BBC History Magazine, 3, no. 5 (2002).
“Periodizatsiia i Prosveshchenie : voprosy transformatsii pravovykh norm v Zapadnoi Evrope” [ Periodization and Enlightenment: issues of the transformation of legal norms in Western Europe], Problemy periodizatsii istorii ta istoriografichnogo protsesu [problems of periodization of history and of the historiographical process], Kharkivs’kii istoriografichnii zbirnik [ Khar’kov historiographical journal], issue 5, Khar’kov , Ukraine, 2002.
“Stalinism in Context and Perspective: Sources of Permission to Hate in Europe,” in James Kaye and Bo Stråth (eds.), Enlightenment and Genocide, Contradictions of Modernity (Brussels: PIE-Peter Lang, 2000).
“The Rise and Fall of Judicial Torture in the Witch Hunts and the Soviet Terror,” Human Rights Review, 1, no. 4 (2000).
“Introduction,” together with Bernd Bonwetsch , in The People’s War.
“Cauldrons of Loyalty and Betrayal: Soviet Soldiers' Behavior 1941 and 1945,” in The People’s War.
“Vezhlivost’ i vlast’ na sovetskikh fabrikhakh i zavodakh . Dostoinstvo rabochikh 1935-1941 gg .” [Politeness and authority in Soviet factories and plants: workers' dignity 1935-1941], in Rossiiskaia povsednevnost ’ 1921-1941 gg . Novye podkhody [Russian everyday life 1921-1941: New approaches] (St. Petersburg: 1995).
“The Stakhanovite Movement: The Background to the Great Terror in the Factories, 1935-1938,” in Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives, ed. J. Arch Getty and Roberta Manning, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1993.
“Stalinism and Professionalism: A Reply to Jane Burbank,” Politics and Society, 20, no. 3 (1992), 367-375.
“New Thoughts on the Old Regime and the Revolution of 1917 in Russia: A Review of Recent Western Literature,” in Modernization and Revolution: Dilemmas of Progress in Late Imperial Russia. Essays in Honor of Arthur P. Mendel, Boulder, Colorado, East European Monographs (distributed by Columbia University Press), 1992.
“Reassessing the History of Soviet Workers: Opportunities to Criticize and Participate in Decision-Making, 1935-1941,” in New Directions in Soviet History, ed. Stephen White, London, Cambridge University Press, 1991.
“The Soviet Family During the ‘Great Terror, 1935-1941,” Soviet Studies , 43, no. 3 (1991), 553-574.
“Social Dimensions of Stalinist Rule: Humor and Terror in the USSR, 1935-1941,” The Journal of Social History, 24, no. 3 (1991), 541-562.
“Fear and Belief in the USSR's ‘Great Terror’: Response to Arrest, 1935-1939,” Slavic Review , 45, no. 2 (1986), 213-234.
“On Desk-bound Parochialism, Commonsense Perspectives, and Lousy Evidence: A Reply to Robert Conquest,” Slavic Review, 45, no. 2 (1986), 238-244.
“Entente with Russia, 1894,” in Historical Dictionary of the French Third Republic , ed. Patrick Hutton, Greenwood Press, 1986.
“Developing Education in Late Imperial Russia: The Concerns of State, ‘Society,’ and People in Moscow, 1906-1914,” Russian History, 11, no. 1 (Spring 1984), 53-82.
“Police and People in Moscow, 1906-1914,” Russian Review, 39, no. 3 (1980), 320-338.
Other scholarly publications:
Letter in Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Mortal Danger: How Misconceptions About Russia Imperil America, second edition, Harper & Row, 1983. Originally published in Foreign Affairs , 59, no. 1 (1980), as a reply to an earlier article by Solzhenitsyn.
Guide to Materials in Russian History and Politics in the University of Michigan Libraries (with William G. Rosenberg), part of the Harlan Hatcher Library Guide Series, 1978.
Other Publications ( titles selected by editors)
“Obama’s Message Heard Across Races,” Cincinnati Enquirer, June 14, 2008.
“The History of Torture Shows It Does Not Work,” article on History News Network blog, June 1, 2009.
“History Teaches Us How Torture Was Misused,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 18, 2009.
“In the War against Torture, of What Use Is a Dispassionate Definition of Terms?” Chronicle of Higher Education,” July 16, 1999.
“A Library Exhibit Offers Faulty ‘Revelations’ about Soviet History,” Chronicle of Higher Education , November 25, 1992.
“TV Makes Politics Accountable,” The Atlanta Journal/The Atlanta Constitution,” October 28, 1992; other versions in The Cincinnati Enquirer, October 23, 1992 and The Baltimore Evening Sun , October 16, 1992.
“Inefficiencies: East and West,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, September 19, 1988.
“Soviets Use Astute Means to Control Big Moslem Sector,” Atlanta Journal and Constitution, January 20, 1980.
“Soviet Humor Helps Relieve a Harsh Life,” Atlanta Journal and Constitution , December 9, 1979.
“Get the Message: USSR Neon is Happy Medium,” Article and photographs, Smithsonian , October 1979.
Conferences Organized
“The Moral, Economic, and Social Life of Coffee,” held at Miami University, October 31-November 1, 2008.
“Parallel Cities, Different Paths: Cincinnati and Kharkiv ( Khar’kov ) in the 19 th and 20 th Centuries,” Miami University, October 2000.
Co-organizer, Conference on Popular Response to World War II in the Soviet Union, Bochum, Germany, 1993.
Reviews
in American Historical Review, Journal of Modern History, Canadian-American Slavic Studies, Slavonica , Slavic Review, Soviet Union, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas , Russian Review, Russian History , H-Russia, and Science and Society.
Recent Invited Talks
“Racisme, Sexualité et Civilisation dans le Voyage en Afrique: Intersections dans la littérature d'Aventure Anglo- Américaine, 1885-1920,” Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar, Senegal, March 16, 2007.
“Imperialism with a Human Face: Comparing Advertising for Coffee and for Soap, 1880-1939,” University of Hertfordshire, Hertford, UK, March 13, 2007
“Funktsiia , dokazatel‘stvo, strakh: v poiskakh vnutrennikh vragov v okote na vedem, sude lincha , i sovetskom velikom terrore” [Function, evidence, fear: in search of internal enemies in the witch hunts, lynching, and the Soviet Great Terror], Khar‘kov National University, October 16, 2006
“Who Were the Romanovs?” Cincinnati Museum Center, February 24, 2005
Scholarly Talks and Papers given in the last
five years
“The Social Life of Coffee: Images of Production, Consumption, and Empire, 1880-1939,” conference on The Moral, Economic, and Social Life of Coffee, Miami University, October-November 2008
“Function and Persecution: A Framework for Reconsidering the Witch Hunts, American Lynching, and the ‘Great Terror’,” Midwest Russian Historians Meeting, University of Chicago, March 2008
“(Re)-Presenting American Lynching: Movies that Tie the Noose,” conference on America and Violence, Canadian Association for American Studies, Halifax, October 2005
“Coffee, Race, and Revolt in Saint Domingue (Haiti),” French Atlantic Conference, London, December 2005
Work in Progress
Lynching: American Mob Murder in Global Perspective, book
The Social, Moral, and Economic Life of Coffee, edited collection of articles
From Salon to Solitude: Coffee, Its Impact, and its Images in the West, 1600 to the Present , book