2014 04/16 Andreas Kappeler

Andreas Kappeler

In the Shadow of Men: Women Historians in the Russian Empire

While during the last 25 years the history of women historians in Western Europe and the United States and their contributions to historiography have been widely researched, women historians in the Russian Empire have been totally ignored. In my lecture I will present 50 women, born between 1804 and 1884, who can be identified as historians (in a wide sense), in order to outline their collective biography (family background, fathers, brothers and husbands, education, occupations, political activities). These women of different ethnic origin made significant contributions to historical studies, particularly in the fields of social history and Alltagsgeschichte, which are widely forgotten today.

Andreas Kappeler served as Professor of East European History at the University of Cologne and later at the University of Vienna where he remained until his retirement in 2011. There he was the director of the Institute for Eastern European History. Professor Kappeler is the executive editor of the Journal of East European History and serves on the editorial board of several international journals. In addition, he serves as a reviewer of international research projects. He is the author of, among other books, The Russian Empire: A Multi-Ethnic History (Routledge, 2001); “Great Russians” and “Little Russians”: Russian-Ukrainian Relations and Perceptions in Historical Perspective (University of Washington, Washington 2003); Russland und die Ukraine. Verflochtene Biographien und Geschichten (Böhlau, Wien/Köln/Weimar 2012); Die Kosaken. Geschichte und Legenden (Beck, München 2013).