Worobec, Christine D. 1955(?)–

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Worobec, Christine D. 1955(?)–

PERSONAL: Born c. 1955. Education: University of Toronto, B.A., 1977, M.A., 1978, Ph.D., 1984.

ADDRESSES: Home—DeKalb, IL. Office—Department of History, Northern Illinois University, Zulauf 715, DeKalb, IL 60115. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, history tutor, 1979–81, 1983–84; Kent State University, Kent, OH, assistant professor, 1984–92, associate professor of history, 1992–99, director of the Soviet and East European Studies Program, 1991–99, history department graduate coordinator, 1992–96; Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, associate professor, 1999–2001, professor of history, 2001–, Presidential Research Professor, 2003–07. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, visiting associate professor of history, 1998.

MEMBER: American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, American Association for Ukrainian Studies, American Historical Association, Association for Women in Slavic Studies, Canadian Association of Slavists, Slavic and East European Folklore Association.

AWARDS, HONORS: Heldt Prize for the best book written by a woman, Association for Women in Slavic Studies, for Peasant Russia: Family and Community in the Post-Emancipation Period, 1991; National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, 1996–97, 2006–07; Heldt Prize for the best book in Slavic/East European/Eurasian Women's studies, Association for Women in Slavic Studies, for Possessed: Women, Witches, and Demons in Imperial Russia, 2001.

WRITINGS:

(Compiler, with Halyna Myroniuk) Ukrainians in North America: A Select Bibliography, Immigration History Research Center, University of Minnesota (St. Paul, MN), 1981.

(Editor, with Barbara Evans Clements and Barbara Alpern Engel, and contributor) Russia's Women: Accommodation, Resistance, Transformation, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1991.

Peasant Russia: Family and Community in the Post-Emancipation Period, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1991.

Possessed: Women, Witches, and Demons in Imperial Russia, Northern Illinois University Press (DeKalb, IL), 2001.

Contributor to books, including Land Commune and Peasant Community in Russia: Communal Forms in Imperial and Early Soviet Society, edited by Roger Bartlett, Macmillan, 1990; Peasant Economy, Culture, and Politics of European Russia, 1800–1921, edited by Esther Kingston-Mann and Timothy Mixter, Princeton University Press, 1991; Cultures in Flux: Lower Class Values, Practices, and Resistance in Late Imperial Russia, edited by Stephen P. Frank and Mark D. Steinberg, Princeton University Press, 1994; The Human Tradition in Modern Russia, edited by William B. Husband, Scholarly Resources, 2000; Russian Masculinities in History and Culture, edited by Barbara Evans Clements, Rebecca Friedman, and Dan Healy, Palgrave, 2002; Rossiiskaia istoricheskaia mozaika: Sbornik nauchnykh statei/Russian Historical Mosaic: Collection of Scientific Articles, edited by A.L. Litvin, Kazanskoe Matematicheskoe Obshchestvo, 2003; Culture, Nation, and Identity: The Ukrainian-Russian Encounter (1600–1945), edited by Andreas Kappeler, Zenon E. Kohut, Frank E. Sysyn, and Mark von Hagen, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2003; and Sacred Stories: Religion and Spirituality in Modern Russian Culture, edited by Mark Steinberg and Heather Coleman, Indiana University Press, in press. Contributor to journals, including Russian Review, Slavic Review, Journal of Social History, and Canadian Slavonic Papers.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Currently working on a bibliography of published works on women and gender in Russia, a biography of St. Seraphim of Sarov, and a study of Orthodox pilgrimages within modern Russia and Ukraine and to holy sites abroad.

SIDELIGHTS: Christine D. Worobec is an educator and social and cultural historian whose studies have focused on imperial Russia and modern-day Ukraine. Her research centers primarily on Russian and Ukrainian peasantries, the history of women, and popular religion. In Peasant Russia: Family and Community in the Post-Emancipation Period, she attempts to unite three historical sources: nineteenth-century Russian ethnographic literature, recent studies of Russian agrarian history compiled by both Russian and Western experts, and more recent writings regarding demography and family history from societies prior to the spread of industrialism. Edgar Melton remarked in a review for the Journal of Social History that "the strongest point in this study is its conscious striving to integrate a welter of sources into a broad, coherent panorama of peasant life, one shorn of regional and local nuances."

Possessed: Women, Witches, and Demons in Imperial Russia offers a very different type of historical outlook, this one a serious examination of the history of a type of demonic possession in Russian culture known as klikushestvo. Worobec looks not only at the religious aspects of this phenomenon but also the social and gender roles. This is important because this type of possession was attributed primarily to females, a fact that invites comparison to the Salem witch trials. Journal of Modern History contributor Cathy A. Frierson observed that "Worobec's writing is direct and free of jargon, making this study accessible to advanced undergraduates as well as graduate students and fellow historians. She employs legal history, social history, religious history, and intellectual history of representations. She includes folklore, medical anthropology, and frequent comparisons to other cultures."