New Books Network

About Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon

NBN Episodes hosted by Kimberly:

Popular Culture July 22, 2019

Smoking Under the Tsars

A History of Tobacco in Imperial Russia

Tricia Starks

Hosted by Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon
How and when did Russia become a country of smokers? Why did makhorka and papirosy become ubiquitous products of tobacco consumption? Tricia Starks explores these themes as well as the connections between tobacco, gender, and empire in her latest monograph, Smoking Under the Tsars: A History of Tobacco in Imperial Russia (Cornell University Press, 2018). Starks illustrates how tobacco influenced facets of life, politics, morality, and culture in the 19th …
Central Asian Studies December 26, 2018

Azan on the Moon

Entangling Modernity Along Tajikistan’s Pamir Highway

Till Mostowlansky

Hosted by Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon
In eastern Tajikistan, the Trans-Pamir Highway flows through the mountains creating a lunar-like landscape. In his latest work, Azan on the Moon: Entangling Modernity Along Tajikistan’s Pamir Highway (University of …
Central Asian Studies December 11, 2018

A Sacred Space Is Never Empty

A History of Soviet Atheism

Victoria Smolkin

Hosted by Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon
The specter of the “Godless” Soviet Union haunted the United States and continental Western Europe throughout the Cold War, but what did atheism mean in the Soviet Union? What was …
American Studies October 30, 2018

The New Immigrant Whiteness

Race, Neoliberalism, and Post-Soviet Migration to the United States

Claudia Sadowski-Smith

Hosted by Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon
From Dancing with the Stars to the high-profile airport abandonment of seven-year-old Artyom Savelyev by his American adoptive parents in April 2010, popular representations of post-Soviet immigrants in America span …
Literary Studies September 10, 2018

State of Madness

Psychiatry, Literature and Dissent After Stalin

Rebecca Reich

Hosted by Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon
In her new book, State of Madness: Psychiatry, Literature and Dissent After Stalin (Northern Illinois University Press, 2018), Rebecca Reich argues that Soviet dissident writers used literary narratives to counter …
Central Asian Studies July 31, 2018

Soviet and Muslim

The Institutionalization of Islam in Central Asia

Eren Tasar

Hosted by Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon
How was the Soviet Union able to avoid issues of religious and national conflict with its large and diverse Islamic population? In his new book, Soviet and Muslim: The Institutionalization …
Russian and Eurasian Studies July 16, 2018

Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial

Scenes from the Great Terror in Soviet Ukraine

Lynne Viola

Hosted by Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon
What happened inside NKVD interrogation rooms during the Great Terror? How did the perpetrators feel when the Soviet state turned on them in 1938 during “the purge of the purgers?” …
Eastern European Studies March 22, 2018

If the Walls Could Speak

Inside a Women's Prison in Communist Poland

Anna Muller

Hosted by Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon
Today we talked to Dr. Anna Muller about her latest book, If the Walls Could Speak: Inside a Women's Prison in Communist Poland (Oxford University Press, 2017). Using archival research …
African Studies February 22, 2018

Soviet Journey

A Critical Annotated Edition

Christopher J. Lee, ed.

Hosted by Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon
Kimberly speaks with Dr. Christopher J. Lee about his newest book A Soviet Journey: A Critical Annotated Edition (Lexington Books, 2017). A Soviet Journey was a travel memoir written by …