Friedman, Rebecca 1968–

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Friedman, Rebecca 1968–

PERSONAL:

Born November 9, 1968. Education: University of Michigan, B.A., 1990, Ph.D., 2000.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of History, DM ACI371A, Florida International University, University Park, Miami, FL 33199. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, research assistant, 1991-92; Center for Jewish History, Krakow, Poland, intern, 1995; University of Maryland, instructor, 1998-99; Florida International University, University Park, assistant professor, 2000-06, associate professor of history and humanities, 2006—, assistant director of the Women's Studies Center, 2005-06, director of undergraduate studies, department of history, 2006—. Member of advisory board of Portrait of Women and Girls in Miami-Dade County, Miami-Dade Women's Fund Project.

MEMBER:

American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, American Historical Association, Association of Women in Slavic Studies, Southern Council on Slavic Studies.

AWARDS, HONORS:

University of Michigan, fellowship in Polish, 1992-95, and in Ukrainian, 1993-94; foreign language studies grant, Center for Russian and East European Studies; research grant, International Research and Exchanges Board, 1995-96; dissertation fellowship, Social Science research Council, 1997; grant, Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, 1998; research awards and grants, Florida International University, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005, and faculty teaching award, 2005; named an associate of the Davis Center for Russian Studies, Harvard University, 2001-04, renewed, 2004-07; faculty research award, National Endowment for the Humanities, 2006-07.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Barbara Evans Clemens and Dan Healey) Russian Masculinities in History and Culture, Palgrave (New York, NY), 2002.

Masculinity, Autocracy and the Russian University, 1804-1863, Palgrave Macmillan (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor to books, including The Encyclopedia of the Russian Women's Movement, edited by Norma Noonan and Carol Nechemia, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 2001. Contributor to journals, including Russian Review, and of reviews to Canadian-American Slavic Studies. Editor, Michigan Feminist Studies, University of Michigan, 1993-94; contributing review editor, biography, University of Hawaii Press, 2002—.

SIDELIGHTS:

Slavic scholar Rebecca Friedman is the editor, with Barbara Evans Clemens and Dan Healey, of Russian Masculinities in History and Culture, the first English-language volume in the field of Russian masculinity study. Most of the contributions in this collection focus on male roles in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but there is also a balanced selection of articles that gives the volume a broad range. Olga Vanshtein looks at imperial dandies, and Julie Gilmour and Barbara Evans Clemens write about postwar athletes. Marital love in Petrine Russia is the subject of an article by Nancy Shields Kollmann, and Friedman focuses on the students of Nicholaevan Russia. Dan Healey provides an overview of the homosexual subculture. These contributors emphasize that in Russia, more than in the West, masculine behavior was strictly defined, and the state interfered in the lives of men in every way, from their family lives to the clothing for men that it considered proper.

Laura L. Phillips reviewed Russian Masculinities in History and Culture in the Historian, commenting on several contributions that she felt "speak more to research agendas in Russian history than to current concerns in gender studies per se." These include Christine Worobec's exploration of masculinity in peasant society, Tom Schrand's study of masculinity during the Stalin era, and Barbara Alpern Engel's writings on marital separation as it was perceived by men. Phillips concluded that the book "is an overdue gateway that will prompt scholars to take the study of masculinity in Russia seriously."

Friedman is the author of Masculinity, Autocracy and the Russian University, 1804-1863, the first booklength study of masculinity in Imperial Russia. In this volume she studies both official and unofficial life at universities across the Russian empire in presenting a history of how gender ideologies were formed and negotiated in the nineteenth century. The book begins with "Introduction: Revising Old Narratives: Masculinity and Autocracy in the Nineteenth Century," followed by chapters titled "The Autocracy's Administrative Ideal," "Tavern Sociability," "Fraternities, Dueling and Student Honor," "Friendship, Romance and Romantic Friendship," "Loyal Sons and the Domestic Ideal," and ending with the author's "Conclusions."

Friedman focuses on the period of the reign of Nicholas I and the years of university reform, from 1804 to 1863. The "administrative ideal" of masculinity referred to in the title of the second chapter includes "orderliness, respectability, and humility." Alexander M. Martin noted in the Historian that Friedman "argues that this resembled the bourgeois values emerging in Western Europe at the same time, but whereas Europeans were acquiring these notions through the mechanisms of civil society, Nicholas attempted to inculcate them through top-down regulation." Martin pointed out that Friedman demonstrates that state policies in pursuit of establishing an ideal were not as resented, oppressive, or pervasive as has been previously assumed. Students had more than one role model of masculinity because of their social lives, which included imbibing at taverns, fraternities, and friendships, including male romantic friendships. Martin described the history as a "stimulating volume."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, June, 2003, Eric Naiman, review of Russian Masculinities in History and Culture, p. 942; April, 2006, James C. McClelland, review of Masculinity, Autocracy and the Russian University, 1804-1863, p. 587.

Historian, summer, 2004, Laura L. Phillips, review of Russian Masculinities in History and Culture, p. 390; fall, 2006, Alexander M. Martin, review of Masculinity, Autocracy and the Russian University, 1804-1863, p. 626.

Journal of Modern History, June, 2005, Anna Krylova, review of Russian Masculinities in History and Culture, p. 510.

Slavic Review, summer, 2003, Abby M. Schrader, review of Russian Masculinities in History and Culture, p. 383; spring, 2006, Christine Ruane, review of Masculinity, Autocracy and the Russian University, 1804-1863, p. 186.