Siegel, Jennifer

views updated

Siegel, Jennifer

PERSONAL:

Education: Yale University, B.A., Ph.D., 1998.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Ohio State University, Department of History, 342 Dulles Hall, 230 W. 17th Ave., Columbus, OH 43210. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Academic and historian. Lectured at a number of universities, including the University of Pennsylvania, Boston University, Yale University, and Bennington College; Ohio State University, Columbus, assistant professor then associate professor of history. Olin postdoctoral fellow; Mellon Foundation dissertation fellow; Junior Faculty Fellowship, Smith Richardson Foundation.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Barbara Jelavich Prize, American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, 2003, for Endgame.

WRITINGS:

Endgame: Britain, Russia, and the Final Struggle for Central Asia, I.B. Tauris (New York, NY), 2002.

(Editor, with Peter Jackson) Intelligence and Statecraft: The Use and Limits of Intelligence in International Society, Praeger (Westport, CT), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS:

Jennifer Siegel earned a bachelor of arts degree from Yale University. She then continued her studies at the university, earning a Ph.D. in 1998. Siegel has lectured at a number of universities across the United States, including the University of Pennsylvania, Yale University, Boston University, and Bennington College. She also served as an Olin postdoctoral fellow and a Mellon Foundation dissertation fellow. Siegel eventually became an assistant professor of history at Ohio State University. Siegel has taught courses on a range of topics, including European military and diplomatic history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, comparative empires, international relations, the origins of wars, modern intelligence history, and the history of oil. Her research interests additionally include the financial assistance given by the French and British to Russia in the years leading up to the Genoa Conference of 1922 and a study of Afghan intelligence in the early 1900s.

Siegel published her first book, Endgame: Britain, Russia, and the Final Struggle for Central Asia, in 2002. The account received the 2003 Barbara Jelavich Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. The book looks at the relations surrounding parties involved in the Anglo-Russian Convention in 1907. It also shows specifically how Persia, Afghanistan, and Tibet were impacted by the decisions.

Keith Neilson, writing in the American Historical Review, called Endgame a "first-rate study," remarking that "Siegel is to be congratulated. Her detailed work in the Russian archives provides both a depth and nuance to our understanding of Russian policy to an extent unavailable before." In Slavonic and East European Studies, Raymond Pearson wrote: "As an investigation into the remorseless friction between two proudly expansionist but over-extended and therefore vulnerable Great Powers, Endgame makes a magisterial and original contribution towards our reunderstanding of the world which was to disappear with the First World War." Keith Wilson, writing in Albion, concluded that "altogether, although not as definitive, detailed, comprehensive, and convincing as the reader is led to expect, this debut volume does help to redress the balance of historiographical attention as between European and extra-European concerns in the cases of the British and Russian empires, and for that reason alone is a welcome addition to the literature."

Siegel edited Intelligence and Statecraft: The Use and Limits of Intelligence in International Society in 2005 with Peter Jackson. The book discusses covert operations and spying as a modern and evolving form of international relations between countries. American, Canadian, and British political scientists and historians contribute a number of topics across nine essays to the book, including issues relating to Austria's occupation of Ferrara in 1847 and its crisis management; the British Royal Navy's war planning and intelligence reports on Japan in the decades leading up to World War II; the Younghusband expedition to Tibet and Russian intelligence; the evolution of West Germany's Ostpolitic from 1969-74 and the Stasi.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Albion, January 1, 2004, Keith Wilson, review of Endgame: Britain, Russia, and the Final Struggle for Central Asia, p. 718.

American Historical Review, December 1, 2003, Keith Neilson, review of Endgame, p. 1420.

Asian Affairs, October 1, 2002, Anthony Wynn, review of Endgame, p. 377.

International History Review, June 1, 2004, Sneh Mahajan, review of Endgame, p. 392.

Journal of Military History, October 1, 2005, Brian G. Shellum, review of Intelligence and Statecraft: The Use and Limits of Intelligence in International Society, p. 1224.

Journal of Modern History, June 1, 2005, Edward Ingram, review of Endgame, p. 427.

Reference & Research Book News, November 1, 2005, review of Intelligence and Statecraft.

Russian Review, April 1, 2004, review of Endgame.

Slavic Review, December 22, 2003, Michael Hughes, review of Endgame, p. 856.

Slavonic and East European Review, October 1, 2003, Raymond Pearson, review of Endgame, p. 749.