New Books Network

About Diana Dukhanova

NBN Episodes hosted by Diana:

Russian and Eurasian Studies June 4, 2021

Dostoevsky's Incarnational Realism

Finding Christ among the Karamazovs

Paul J. Contino

Hosted by Diana Dukhanova
Paul Contino’s Catholic reading of Dostoevsky’s final masterwork, premised on the novel’s “powerful capacity to inspire readers to be better people”, follows hero Alyosha Karamazov’s spiritual maturation as a “monk …
Russian and Eurasian Studies May 5, 2021

Ideologies of Race

Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union in Global Context

David Rainbow

Hosted by Diana Dukhanova
Conflicting notions about the dynamics of race in Russia and the Soviet Union have made it difficult for both scholars and other observers of the region to understand rising racial …
Russian and Eurasian Studies May 5, 2021

Visual Thought in Russian Religious Philosophy

Pavel Florensky's Theory of the Icon

Clemena Antonova

Hosted by Diana Dukhanova
Often referred to as “the Russian Leonardo”, religious philosopher and Orthodox parish priest Pavel Florensky was a pivotal figure in the Russian religious renaissance at the turn of the 20th …
African American Studies September 10, 2020

Bury My Heart in a Free Land

Black Women Intellectuals in Modern U.S. History

Hettie V. Williams

Hosted by Diana Dukhanova
Black women intellectuals have traditionally been overlooked in the academic study of American intellectual history. Bury My Heart in a Free Land: Black Women Intellectuals in Modern U.S. History (Praeger) …
Religion August 3, 2020

Birth Control Battles

How Race and Class Divided American Religion

Melissa J. Wilde

Hosted by Diana Dukhanova
Although it has largely been erased from the collective memory of American Christianity, the debate over eugenics was a major factor in the history of 20th-century religious movements, with many …
Russian and Eurasian Studies June 23, 2020

Diffusing Human Trafficking Policy in Eurasia

Laura A. Dean

Hosted by Diana Dukhanova
Laura A. Dean (Assistant Professor of Political Science at Millikin University and director of the Human Trafficking Research Lab) has spent many years investigating the urgent human rights issue of …
American Studies June 10, 2020

Tiny You

A Western History of the Anti-Abortion Movement

Jennifer Holland

Hosted by Diana Dukhanova
Although much has been written about the anti-abortion movement in the United States, Jennifer Holland (Assistant Professor of U.S. History, University of Oklahoma) has written the first monograph-length history of …
Gender Studies May 19, 2020

Mary, Mother of Martyrs

How Motherhood Became Self-Sacrifice in Early Christianity

Kathleen Gallagher Elkins

Hosted by Diana Dukhanova
Throughout Christian history, the Virgin Mary has been idealized as a self-sacrificing mother and a model for all Christian women to emulate. However, she is one of many ancient maternal …
Literary Studies May 18, 2020

Life is Elsewhere

Symbolic Geography in the Russian Provinces

Anne Lounsbery

Hosted by Diana Dukhanova
In her journey through the greatest monuments of 19th- and early 20th-century Russian literature, as well as through lesser-known works from women and regional writers, Anne Lounsbery (Professor and Chair …
Literary Studies November 20, 2019

The Epistolary Art of Catherine the Great

Kelsey Rubin-Detlev

Hosted by Diana Dukhanova
The Epistolary Art of Catherine the Great (Liverpool University Press, 2019) is the first scholarly monograph devoted to the comprehensive analysis of the letters of Empress Catherine the Great of …
African Studies October 23, 2019

Women Political Leaders in Rwanda and South Africa

Narratives of Triumph and Loss

Naleli Morojele

Hosted by Diana Dukhanova
Rwanda and South Africa have some of the highest rates of women’s political representation in the world, with significant growth particularly in the last 20 years. Through interviews with eleven …
East Asian Studies July 18, 2019

Russian Orthodoxy and the Russo-Japanese War

Betsy Perabo

Hosted by Diana Dukhanova
As Russian militarism becomes increasingly intertwined with Russian Orthodoxy theology in the 21st century, the history of the Church’s relationship to war and its justification becomes particularly relevant. Betsy Perabo’s …
Art May 27, 2019

Global Art and the Cold War

John J. Curley

Hosted by Diana Dukhanova
It was the passionate amateur painter, Winston Churchill, who introduced one of the Cold War’s key metaphors: The Iron Curtain. As John J. Curley argues in Global Art and the …
Literary Studies April 16, 2019

Plots Against Russia

Conspiracy and Fantasy after Socialism

Eliot Borenstein

Hosted by Diana Dukhanova
Since the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, conspiratorial thinking has taken deep root in contemporary Russia, moving from the margins to the forefront of cultural, historical, and political …
Film August 1, 2018

Performing Femininity

Woman as Performer in Early Russian Cinema

Rachel Morley

Hosted by Diana Dukhanova
In studying the pre-Revolutionary films of Evgenii Bauer, Dr. Rachel Morley (Lecturer in Russian Cinema and Culture at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London) discovered …
Russian and Eurasian Studies July 20, 2018

Russian Peasant Women Who Refused to Marry

Spasovite Old Believers in the 18th-19th Centuries

John Bushnell

Hosted by Diana Dukhanova
In the course of investigating marriage patterns among Russian peasants in the 18th and 19th century, Northwestern University history professor John Bushnell discovered an unusually high rate of unmarried women …
French Studies March 14, 2018

Mother of the Church

Sofia Svechina, the Salon, and the Politics of Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Russia and France

Tatyana V. Bakhmetyeva

Hosted by Diana Dukhanova
In Mother of the Church: Sofia Svechina, the Salon, and the Politics of Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Russia and France (Northern Illinois University Press, 2016), Tatyana V. Bakhmetyeva explores an influential …