Past Award Recipients

Past Recipients of the Heldt Prize

2009

Best book in Slavic/Eastern European/Eurasian women's studies:

Christine Ruane, The Empire's New Clothes: A History of the Russian Fashion Industry, 1700-1917, Yale University Press, 2009

The Empire's New Clothes is a unique work of exceptional breadth and originality. As the first comprehensive history of the Russian fashion industry, it makes a valuable contribution to both Russian and women's history and the comparative history of dress, fashion, and consumption. Dr. Ruane examines the history of clothing from multiple perspectives, from the labor systems involved in its production to changes in fashion and consumer culture to the role of dress in the formation of national identity. Indeed, one of the book's main strengths lies in her deft interweaving of political, economic, labor, gender, cultural and art history. The study is based on meticulous research into a rich variety of little-used primary source materials, from economic statistics on the needle trades to fashion magazines. Of particular note are the book's exquisite and carefully selected illustrations. Images of mothers and their children in their Sunday best, seamstresses in their sweatshops, and Russian fashionistas not only complement the text but reinforce or deepen the book's arguments. The Committee also praised Dr. Ruane's skillful use of theoretical and historical literature on gender, fashion, clothing, and consumption in the West. The Empire's New Clothes deepens our understanding of a number of major themes of Russian history, including westernization and western influence in Russia, which Dr. Ruane examines from a fresh and important perspective. The book also makes a unique contribution to women's studies by examining simultaneously women as producers and consumers. But The Empire's New Clothes will be read by more than Dr. Ruane's fellow Russianists and historians; this beautiful book will fascinate and engage readers across disciplines and the general public as well.

Best book by a woman in any area of Slavic/East European/Eurasian studies:

Olga Shevchenko, Crisis and the Everyday in Postsocialist Moscow, Indiana University Press, 2009

The Committee praised Crisis and the Everyday as smart, sophisticated, and also very timely. The book is a very thorough exploration of the discourse and experience of crisis among Muscovites in their everyday lives. What happens to people when the hubris of empire is exposed as unsustainable, and the ontological reality of an entire nation must be radically reshaped within a few short years? This is not only a picture of an actual crisis, but a portrait of how people construct and deploy a discourse of crisis within the quotidian moments of daily life. Shevchenko argues that the imagination of the crisis was just as important as the crisis itself, and that individual reactions to personal crisis reinforced and deepened the larger societal crisis. Dr. Shevchenko has mastered Western sociological and anthropological theory and method, while never losing sight of the deeper intricacies of the process of social change in Russia. The strength of this book is its focus on everyday experience, an analytic frame which is so often ignored, but which has provided incredibly rich scholarship in the past. Dr. Shevchenko perfectly captures the angst of Russia in the 1990s through the words and thoughts of her diverse informants, giving us a window into the internal anxieties and survival strategies of a population caught in the midst of radical social, political, and economic change. Chapter 6, about building autonomy in everyday life, is particularly brilliant, demonstrating how Muscovites internalized postmodern individualism and walled themselves off from the state and from each other. It includes a fascinating reexamination of Russians' purported political apathy, and a persuasive argument about how their withdrawal from politics is nevertheless staged in highly politicized terms and based on renewed commitment to family. This leads Dr. Shevchenko to a sophisticated critique of the concept of civil society and its potential for stimulating political engagement. The Committee liked this book for its careful methodology, intellectual boldness, and the hopeful note upon which it ends. This is an intimate portrait of Russians in the 1990s, beautifully written and an exemplary piece of scholarship.

Best translation in Slavic/Eastern European/Eurasian women's studies:

Judith Deutsch Kornblatt, Divine Sophia: The Wisdom Writings of Vladimir Solovyov, including Annotated Translations by Boris Jakim, Judith Kornblatt, and Laury Magnus; Cornell University Press, 2009

The Divine Sophia succeeds masterfully in fulfilling two difficult yet important tasks. First, it provides an eminently readable collection in English language of some of the most significant writings by Vladimir Solovyov, arguably the central figure in the history of Russian religious philosophy. The fluent translations, done by Dr. Judith Kornblatt, Boris Jakim, and Laury Magnus, represent the variety of genres in which Solovyov wrote about Divine Sophia, from youthful poems and a semi-autobiographical short story to philosophical-religious treatises. They are accompanied by thorough annotations, introductions, and reading guides. Second, and perhaps more significant, the works are contextualized in an extended scholarly essay, "Who is Solovyov and What Is Sophia," by Dr. Kornblatt. The essay acquaints the reader with the life and thought of this eccentric but extremely influential philosopher, situating him within the major intellectual, spiritual, and historical contexts of his time. The clarity of her treatment of his ideas and their relationship to history and philosophy makes this challenging figure accessible to a broad audience and enables non-specialist readers to understand Solovyov's intricate and fascinating philosophical systems.

Best article in Slavic/Eastern European/Eurasian women's studies:

Stephanie Sandler, "Visual Poetry after Modernism: Elizaveta Mnatsakanova," Slavic Review 76, No. 3 (Fall 2008), 610-41

In "Visual Poetry after Modernism: Elizaveta Mnatsakanova," Stephanie Sandler explains the esoteric in terms of the essential-and succeeds in illuminating both. Her succinct retrospective consideration of the major poets of the Silver Age, especially Belyi and Khlebnikov, provides a framework for introducing the poetry of Mnatsakanova. In analyzing the musical and visual dimensions of this contemporary poet, Sandler explores the involvement of the senses, the interpretive challenges, and the joy available to the reader who is able to engage fully in an encounter with the poet's words and images. This elegantly and accessibly written essay demystifies a difficult poet while helping us to understand what she makes of her forerunners and where she points her followers.

2008

Best book by a woman in any area of Slavic/East European/Eurasian studies:

Catherine Wanner, Communities of the Converted: Ukrainians and Global Evangelism (Cornell University Press, 2007).

Best book in Slavic/Eastern European/Eurasian women's studies:

Eliot Borenstein, Overkill: Sex and Violence in Contemporary Russian Popular Culture (Cornell University Press, 2007).

Best article in Slavic/Eastern European/Eurasian women's studies:

Abby Schrader, "Unruly Felons and Civilizing Wives: Cultivating Marriage in the Siberian Exile System, 1822-1860," Slavic Review vol. 66, no. 2 (Summer 2007): 230-56.

2007

Best book by a woman in any area of Slavic/East European/Eurasian studies:

Valerie Kivelson, Cartographies of Tsardom, The Land and Its Meaning traces (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007).

Best book in Slavic/Eastern European/Eurasian women's studies:

Marianne Kamp, The New Woman in Uzbekistan: Islam, Modernity, and Unveiling under Communism (Seattle, Washington: University of Washington Press, 2007).

Best article in Slavic/Eastern European/Eurasian women's studies:

Diana Greene, "The Menagerie or the Visitor's Pass? Aleksandra Zrazhevskaia and Praskov'ia Bakunina on Russian Women Writers," Carl Beck Papers (Pittsburgh, PA: Pittsburgh University Press, 2007.)

2006

Best book by a woman in any area of Slavic/East European/Eurasian studies:

Marci Shore, Caviar and Ashes: A Warsaw Generation's Life and Death in Marxism, 1918-1968 (Yale University Press, 2006).

Best book in Slavic/Eastern European/Eurasian women's studies:

Michele Rivkin-Fish, Women's Health in Post-Soviet Russia: The Politics of Intervention (Indian Unviersity Press, 2005).

Best article in Slavic/Eastern European/Eurasian women's studies:

Elizabeth Jones Hemenway, "Mothers of Communists-Women Revolutionaries and the Construction of a Soviet Identity" in Helena Goscilo and Andrea Lanoux, eds., Gender and National Identity in Twentieth-Century Russian Culture (Northern Illinois University Press, 2006)

Best translation in Slavic/Eastern European/Eurasian women's studies:

Sibelan Forrester, American Scream: Palindrome Apocalypse (Ooligan Press, 2005).

2005

Best book by a woman in any area of Slavic/East European/Eurasian studies:

Amy Nelson, Music for the Revolution: Musicians and Power in Early Soviet Russia (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004).

Best book in Slavic/Eastern European/Eurasian women's studies:

Shana Penn, Solidarity's Secret: The Women who Defeated Communism in Poland (University of Michigan Press, 2005).

Best article in Slavic/Eastern European/Eurasian women's studies:

Michele Rivkin-Fish, "'Change Yourself and the Whole World Will Become Kinder': Russian Activists for Reproductive Health and the Limits of Claims Making for Women," Medical Anthropology Quarterly 18, no. 3 (2004): 281-304.

Past Outstanding Achievement Award Recipients

  • Barbara Engel (1996)
  • Helena Goscilo (1997)
  • Patricia Herlihy (1998)
  • Diana Burgin (1999)
  • Janet Rabinowitch (2000)
  • Olga Yokohama (2001)
  • Stephanie Sandler (2002)
  • Adele Lindenmeyr (2003)
  • Anna Lisa Crone (2004)
  • Brenda Meehan (2005)
  • Nadia Azhgikhina (2006)
  • Gitta Hammarberg (2007)
  • Christine Worobec (2008)
  • Beth Holmgren (2009)

Mary Zirin Prize Past Recipients

Elena Shulman (2009)

Elena Shulman is an independent scholar and the author of the superb and highly readable Stalinism on the Frontier of Empire: Women and State Formation in the Soviet Far East (Cambridge University Press 2008). The book examines the Khetagurovite movement of idealistic female migrants to the Far East during the high tide of Stalinism. In the best tradition of women's history and gender-aware work, Shulman makes readers rethink the Soviet frontier and Stalinism itself, through the lens of this heretofore unexplored phenomenon. The Mary Zirin Prize committee looks forward to witnessing and consuming her continued production.

Pavla Frýdlová (2008)

Pavla Frýdlová is an independent scholar from the Czech Republic, the co-founder and first vice-president of the Czech Oral History Association founded in January 2007, and the co-founder of the Gender Studies Center in Prague, Czech Republic.

She is also the international coordinator and director of the "Women's Memory" project, whose purpose is "searching for Identity under Socialism." The project involves collecting oral histories of women from three generations who were born between 1920 and 1960.

As coordinator of the project, Pavla Frýdlová interacts with representatives from her own Czech Republic and from Slovakia, former East Germany, Poland, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, and Ukraine. She is also responsible for the project archives. So far, the project has yielded 500 interviews, 20,000 pages of transcription, three documentary movies, several radio programs, and 20 published books, four of which were edited by Pavla herself.

  • Lisa Alzo and Virginia Parobek (2002)
  • Linda Edmondson and Sonia Ketchian (2001)
  • Judith Vowles (2000)
  • Elena Ivanovna Trofimovna and Kazimiera Janina Cottam (1999)

Graduate Research Prize Past Recipients

  • Roland Clark, History, University of Pittsburg (2009)
  • Dorota M. Lech, research on Poland's response to sex trafficking reforms (2007)
  • Simone Ispa-Landa, master's thesis research, "Suspended Causality: Cultures of Intimacy among Two Cohorts of Russian Women" (2005)
  • Ania Plomien, research on the integration of East European countries into the European Union and its consequences for the status of women in those countries (2003, as "Pre-dissertation Prize" as the prize was previously titled)

Graduate Essay Prize Past Recipients

  • Faith C. Hillis, Ph.D., History, 2009, Yale University, "State, Society, and Capitalism in the Southwest Borderlands" (chapter 1 from her dissertation, "Between Empire and Nation: Urban Politics, Community, and Violence in Kiev, 1863-1907") (2009)
  • Anna Kuxhausen, "The Modern Miracles of Breastfeeding: Raising the Nation on Mothers' Milk" (2007)
  • Anna Urasova, "Saving Private Sychev: Russian Masculinities in Crisis" and Jelena Subotic, "Confronting the Past When the Past Is Not Yet Over: Transitional Justice in Serbia" (2006)
  • Christina Vatulescu, "The Politics of Estrangement" (2005)
  • Elena Shulman, "'Bol'sheviki Were Never Ascetics!': Female Morale and Communist Morality" (2004)