Department of History 500 Main Hall West Chester, Pennsylvania 19383	(610)436-2201 http://www.wcupa.edu/

Lisa A. Kirschenbaum
  Professor of History

Main teaching interests:

Modern European and Russian history. I am particularly interested in thematic courses that transcend national boundaries. Recent undergraduate courses include: Imperial Russia, Twentieth-Century Russia, Twentieth-Century Europe, and Gender and Peace. Recent graduate courses include: Women and the Holocaust; Gender, War, and Revolution in Twentieth-Century Europe. 

Research interests:

Social and cultural history of Russia, with an emphasis on issues of women, family, and memory. I am interested both in the political uses of gender and family, and in the ways culture and social organization shape and define the individual's sense of self. Recent research has focused on the memory of the World War II siege of Leningrad, examining the overlap and interpenetration of individual memories and public commemorations; the gendered dimensions of the urban war experience and urban space; the commemoration of war on the terrain of the city; and the fate of the Soviet myth of "heroic Leningrad" in post-Soviet Russia.

Representative Publications:

       The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941-1995:  Myth, Memories, and Monuments. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

        Small Comrades: Revolutionizing Childhood in Soviet Russia, 1917-1932. New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2001.

       "'The Alientated Body': Gender Identity and the Memory of the Siege of Leningrad." In Gender and World War in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe, edited
by Maria Bucur and Nancy Wingfield. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006.

        "Commemorations of the Siege of Leningrad: A Catastrophe in Myth and Memory." In The Memory of Catastrophe, edited by Peter Gray and Kendrick                     Oliver, 106-17. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004.

        "Innocent Victims and Heroic Defenders: Children and the Siege of Leningrad." In Children and War, edited by James Marten, 279-90. New York: New                      York University Press, 2002.

        "Scripting Revolution: Regicide in Russia." Left History. 7 no. 2 (2001): 28-52.

        "'Our City, Our Hearths, Our Families': Local Loyalties and Private Life in Soviet World War II Propaganda." Slavic Review 59 no. 4 (Winter 2000):    
            825-847.

        "Gender, Memory, and National Myths: Ol'ga Berggol'ts and the Siege of Leningrad." Nationalities Papers 28 no. 3 (September 2000): 551-564.

        "The Kindergarten and the Revolutionary Tradition in Russia." In Kindergartens and Cultures: The Global Diffusion of an Idea, edited by Roberta Wollons.              New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.