Curriculum Vitae

Francis William Wcislo
Associate Professor of History
Vanderbilt University

 

Address

Department of History

Vanderbilt University

Nashville, Tennessee  37235

(615) 322‑0097

 

Education

Ph.D, 1984

Department of History, Columbia University

Russian Area Studies Certificate, 1984

W. Averill Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union, Columbia University

M.Phil, 1984; M.A., 1977

Department of History, Columbia University

Russian Language Certificate, 1975

Leningrad State University

B.A. with Distinction, 1973

University of Michigan

 

Professional Teaching

Visiting Professor, School of History, University of Leeds [UK], 1994-1995

Associate Professor, Dept. of History, Vanderbilt University, May 1990-present

Director, Honors Program, Department of History (juniors and seniors), 1992-3 (4 honors theses), 1993-4 (5 honors theses), 1995-6 (5 honors theses), 1997-8 (4 honors theses); 1998-9 (7 honors theses); 2000-2001 (7 honors theses)

Assistant Professor, Dept. of History, Vanderbilt University, September 1984‑May 1990

Preceptor, Dept. of History, Columbia University,  September 1980‑December 1983

Teaching Assistant, Dept. of History, Columbia University,  September 1979‑May 1980

 

Courses:

Lectures and tutorials:

Medieval and Early Modern Russia

Imperial Russia to 1917

Soviet and Post-Soviet History

European Civilization since 1700

Interdisciplinary Lecture Course, Concepts of Liberty

Comparative Revolutions in China and Russia (team-taught)

 

Undergraduate Seminars:

Demise of the Soviet Empire

Russian Revolutionary Era, 1890-1929

Late Imperial Russian Intellectual History 

Agrarian Russia from Serfdom to Collectivization Modern Western

Introduction to Contemporary Civilization in the West, Ancient Greece to the Present

Images of Men and Women in Modern Russian History (seminar)

Undergraduate Honors:  Introduction to Methods and Research

Undergraduate Honors:  Senior Thesis Seminar

 

Graduate Seminars:

The Russian Revolution

Historical Methods and Research

 

Awards

The Madison Sarratt University Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Education, 2003

The Alumni Education Award, Vanderbilt University National Alumni Association, 1998

Jeffrey Nordhouse Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in the College of Arts and Science, Vanderbilt University, 1993

 

Fellowships and Grants

Research Scholar Fellowship, University Central Research Scholar Grant Program, 1 July 2001-30 June 2002

National Alumni Forum.  Fund for the Renewal of Education [Vanderbilt Institute of Public Policy Studies] (with Professors William Damon [Economics] and John Lachs [Philosophy] for development of interdisciplinary course Liberty@: 1996-8 ($7000)

University Research Council Summer Award (St. Petersburg, Russian Federation) [Witte], summer 1996 ($5000)

Fellow, Robert Penn Warren Center for the Study of the Humanities, Vanderbilt University ["End Times and the Millenium"]: July 1995-July 1996 ($3000)

Short-Term Travel Grant, International Research and Exchanges Board, November 1994 [travel and expense funds for Prof. R. Sh. Ganelin, St. Petersburg Institute of History, Russian Academy of Sciences, to New York for collaborative discussions of Witte Correspondence publication project] ($2500)

Fellow, Robert Penn Warren Center for the Study of the Humanities, Vanderbilt University ["East Central European Literature and the Origins of 1989"]: 1990-1991 ($3000)

Short-Term Grant for Advanced Researchers, International Reasearch and Exchanges Board (Leningrad, USSR) [Witte]:   May-July 1990 ($5000)

Direct Research Support and University Summer Research Grants, University Research Council, Vanderbilt University [A Russian Statesman and His Times:  A Political Biography of Sergei Iul'evich Witte, 1849-1915]:  June-August 1989 ($6000)

Postdoctoral Fellow, The W. Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union, Columbia University  [Reforming Rural Russia.  State, Local Society and National Politics, 1855-1914]:  1987‑1988

Short‑Term Research Grant, Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars  ["Bureaucratic Reform and Political Culture in Late Imperial Russia"]:  Summer 1985

Post‑Doctoral Fellowship, Department of History, University of Pennsylvania ["Peasant Politics and Rural Culture in 19th and 20th Century Russia"]:  Spring 1984

Junior Fellow, Russian Institute, Columbia University:  September 1979‑May 1980

Junior Scholar, International Research and Exchanges Board (Leningrad, Moscow U.S.S.R.):  August 1978‑June 1979

 

 

Publications

1)books

Reforming Rural Russia:  State, Local Society, and National Politics, 1855-1914 (Princeton University Press and Studies of the Harriman Institute, 1990.

 

2)journal articles

“Rereading Old Texts:  Sergei Witte and the Industrialization of Russia,” in McCaffrey, Susan P and Michael Melancon (eds.), Russia in the European Context 1789-1914.  A Member of the Family [New York:  Palgrave MacMillan, 2005]:  71-84

“Sergei Witte and His Times.  A Historiographical Note,” Kritika.  Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History.  New Series, Volume 5, Number 4 (Fall 2004):  749-58.

“Vitte, samoderzhavie i imperiia:  mechty kontsa XIX veka,” Rossiia XXI.  Obshchestvenno-politicheskii i nauchnyi zhurnal, vol 4 [Moscow: July-August 2001]:  144-161.

"Witte, Memory, and the 1905 Revolution:  A Reinterpretation of the Witte Memoirs," Revolutionary Russia, vol. 8, no.2 [December 1995]: 166-78 

"Bureaucratic Reform Before World War I," Russian History/Histoire Russe, 16, Nos. 2-4 [Festschrift for Leopold H. Haimson] (1989), 377-388.

"The Land Captain Reform of 1889 and the Reassertion of Unrestricted Autocratic Authority," Russian History/Histoire Russe, 15, No.2-4 (1988), 285-326.

"Soslovie or Class?  Bureaucratic Reformers and Provincial Gentry in Conflict, 1906‑1908," Russian Review, vol.47, no.1 (January 1988), pp.1-24.

"A Critique of V.S. Diakin's Samoderzhavie, burzhuaziia i dvorianstvo v 1907‑1911 gg.," Kritika XVI, no.2 [Spring 1980], pp.108‑20

 

3)chapters/articles in edited collections

“Peter Arkadievich Stolypin,” Encyclopedia of Russian History (Macmillan Reference USA, 2003)

"O nashikh kategoriiakh," [On Our Categories"] in Rossiia i pervaia mirovaia voina (Materialy mezhdunarodnogo nauchnogo kollokviuma)" (St. Petersburg Branch, Institute of History, Russian Academy of Sciences, 1999): 171-173

The Dilemmas of Emancipation," in James Cracraft (ed.), Major Problems in the History of Imperial Russia (Lexington, MA:  D.C. Heath and Co., 1994), pp. 315-316.

"Otnosheniia mezhdu pravitel'stvom i mestnoi vlast'iu. Stolypin i tret'eiiunskaia monarkhiia," in Russian Academy of Sciences, Division of History, Institute of Russian History, St. Petersburg Branch. Reformy ili revoliutsii.  Rossiia 1861-1917 gg. Materialy mezhdunarodnogo kollokviuma istorikov (Nauka:  St. P, 1992), pp. 43-55, 295-7

 

4)research in progress

Tales of Imperial Russia.  The Life and Times of  Sergei Witte (book, adc 2005)

Mother Volga:  An Ecological and Human History of the Volga River Valley (book project, no adc)

 

5)book reviews

Natsional’nye okrainy rossisskoi imperii: Stanovlenie i razvitie sistemy upravleniia by Agadzhanov, S.G. and V.V. Trepalov (eds.), Slavic Review 60 (2001), 1: 175.

Kistiakovsky. The Struggle for National and Constitutional Rights in the Last Years of Tsarism (Harvard (Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute), 1998) by Susan Heuman: Journal of Modern History 1999

Between Two Revolutions.  Stolypin and the Politics of Renewal in Russia (Northern Illinois, 1998) by Peter Waldron: Journal of Modern History 71 (no.4, Dec. 1999): 1022-3

Paul Miliukov and the Quest for a Liberal Russia, 1880-1918 (Cornell, 1996) by Melissa Kirschke Stockdale: Slavic Review 56 (1997), 3: 570-1.

Memoirs by Mikhail Gorbachev (Doubleday, 1995): America 176 (no.20), June 7-14, 1997, pp. 24-5.

Russia in the Age of Reaction and Reform 1801-1881 (Longman, 1992) by David Saunders: Russian History/Histoire Russe 1993:284-6.

The Memoirs of Count Witte (M.E. Sharpe,1990) by Sidney Harcave: Slavic Review 1992:613-4.

The Tsar=s Viceroys: Russian Provincial Governors in the Last Years of the Empire (Cornell, 1988) by Richard G. Robbins: Slavic Review 48 (1989), 4: 269

Ubiistvo Stolypina: Svidetel=stva i Dokumenty (Telex, 1986) by A. Serebrennikov: Slavic Review 46 (1987),3/4:602-3

Stolypin: Russia=s Last Great Reformer (Princeton, 1986) by A.V. Zenkovsky: Slavic Review 45(1986), 3: 564-5

 

Professional Conferences and Presentations

Participant, “Roundtable:  The Russian Revolution of 1905.  Current Work and Research (“The Crisis of Autocracy and Obshchestvennoe dvizhenie v Rossii), AAASS [November 2005, Salt Lake City]

Participant, “Roundtable:  Imperial Russian Bureaucrats on the Move,” Southern Conference on Slavic Studies, April 2005, Nashville

“How Can Biography Be History? Memoirs, Memory, and Stories of the Prerevolutionary Russian Empire,”  Artz History Lecture (invited), Oberlin College, 3 March 2005. 

“From the Alexander Nevsky Lavra:  Witte in 1915,” Southern Conference on Slavic Studies, March 2004, Savannah

Participant, Roundtable:  Conceptualizing Space in Modern Russian History:  New Research (“Imperial Space and Imperial Imagination,”) AAASS [November 2003, Toronto]

Invited commentator, “Peopling the Periphery:  Russian Settlers in Eurasia from Muscovy to the Recent Past,” Ohio State University, Sept. 28-30, 2001.

“Tales of Imperial Russia.  The Life and Times of Sergei Witte,” Tulane University History Faculty Research Seminar, 14 September 2001

“Pravitel’stvo i nauka (Government and Science),” VI International Colloquium, St. Petersburg, June 2000

“Sergei Witte as a Man of Empire,” Davis Center for Russian Studies, Harvard University, April 2000

"Memories of an Empire Past: A.M. Fadeev, Sergei Witte, and the Caucasus before 1861," AAASS [Denver, 2000]

"Economic Visions in Late Imperial Russia: Deconstructing the Witte System," AAASS  [St. Louis, November 1999]

"O nashikh kategoriiakh" ("Concerning Our Categories"), Commentator, "War and Society", VI International Colloquium:  Russia in the First World War [European University and Institute of History, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russian Federation, June 1998]

"Witte and Late Imperial Economic Thought," Southern Conference on Slavic Studies [Chapel Hill, NC, April 1998]  

Participant, "Engendering the Russian History Survey.  A Roundtable" [AAASS [Seattle, 1997]

"Rereading Old Texts: Sergei Witte and the Industrialization of Russia," Midwest Russian History Workshop [University of Chicago, October 1997]

Participant, "Roundtable:  Russia=s Long Century, 1861-1991.  A Discussion about Teaching the Russian History Survey." Southern Conference on Slavic Studies [Lexington, Ky, March 1997]

Discussant: "War, Patriotism, and National Identity in Russia, 1904-1917,"  AAASS [Boston, 1996]

Discussant, "Making Societies: Knowledge and Authority in Twentieth Century Russia" AAASS [Boston, 1996]

Invited participant, 11th International Dostoevskii Conference [@Dostoevskii i mezh­dunarodnaia kul=tura@], Staraia Russa, Novgorod Oblast=, Russian Federation [May 1996]

AThe Historiography Behind the >Haimson Thesis=@ and chair of the panel, AThirty Years after the Haimson Thesis: A Discussion of Late Imperial Historiography@, Southern Conference on Slavic Studies [Asheville, NC, April 1996]

Modern Europe Seminar, School of History, University of Leeds:  "A Comparative View of Graduate Education in the United States:  1970s vs. 1990s" [May 1995]

Soviet Industrialization Project Seminar, Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham:  "Biography and Late Imperial History" [May 1995]

1995 Conference of British Association for Slavonic and East European Study (Cambridge, UK):  "Witte=s Views of Empire" [March 1995]

Conference of the Study Group on the Russian Revolution (Bath, UK):  "Witte, Memory, and the 1905 Revolution:  A Reinterpretation of the Witte Memoir" [January 1995]

AAASS (Philadelphia, Pa.):  "Witte, Autocracy, and Empire:  Dreaming in the Late 19th Century [November 1994]

AAASS (Phoenix, Ar.):  "Witte's Memories of the 1905 Revolution"---November 1992

Ohio Valley History Conference (Murray, KY):  "Teaching Russian History after the Collapse of the Soviet Union"---October 1992

Commentator, American Historical Association (Chicago, Ill.), "The Zemstvo and the Emergence of Civil Society in Late Imperial Russia"---December 1991

Chair and Participant, American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (Miami, Fl.):  "Stolypin 'Voskres':  The Resurrection of P. A. Stolypin?  A Reconsideration of Late Imperial History (Roundtable)"---November 1991

Discussant, Southern Conference on Slavic Studies (Savannah, Ga.):  "Economics and History in Imperial Russia"---March 1991 

International Colloquium on the Development of the Revolutionary Situation in Early Twentieth Century Russia (USSR Academy of Sciences, Institute of History, Leningrad Division; Leningrad USSR):  "The Relationship Between Local and Central Government"---June 1990

AAASS (Chicago, Ill.):  "Witte's Early Years and the World of Nineteenth Century Russian Officialdom"--November 1989

Research Consortium on Twentieth Century Russian and Soviet History (Harriman Institute, NY, NY):  "Imperial Historiography and a Research Agenda"--October 1989

The Great Reforms in Russian History, 1861-1874 (Philadelphia, Pa.):  "Restructuring Rural Society:  Law and Administration in the Editing Commissions"--May 1989

Southern Conference on Slavic Studies (Charleston, SC):  "Isolation and Defeat:  Bureaucratic Reform on the Eve of the First World War"--October 1988

Chair, "Economy, Law and Institutions in Pre‑Revolutionary Russia," Mid‑Atlantic Slavic Conference, AAASS (Albany, NY), April 1988

Discussant, "The Politics of Social Welfare in Russia, 1864-1917," AAASS (Boston), October 1987

Tennessee Conference of Historians  (Vanderbilt University; Nashville,Tennessee):  "Imperial Russian Bureaucratic Reform at the End of the Old Regime:  An Appraisal"‑‑March 1986

Harriman Institute Seminar Series:  "Bureaucratic Reform in Tsarist Russia:  A Work in Progress"‑‑January 1984

National Seminar for the History of Russian Society in the Twentieth Century (Philadelphia, Pa.):  "Class or Soslovie? Bureaucratic Reformers and Provincial Nobility in Conflict, 1906‑1908"‑‑January 1983

American Historical Association (Washington, D.C.):  "The Stolypin Program of Local Reforms,"Panel on The Crisis of Autocracy and Bureaucracy in the Early Twentieth Century‑‑December 1982

 

Public Presentations

“The End of the USSR and a Look to the Future,” Vanderbilt University Parents’ Weekend faculty Lecture Series, April 2004

"The >Healthening= of Russia:  Notes of A Traveller," Tennessee State University Great Lecturers Series, Nashville, TN, October 1998

"From Soviet Power to the PostSoviet World.  The Transformation of Russian Society, 1978-1996," Dean of the College of A&S=s Meet the Faculty Luncheon, Nashville, TN [March 1998]

"Tsarist Russia and the Romanov Dynasty," The Centennial Club Lecture Series, Nashville, TN [January 19989]

"A Romanov Family Album," Vanderbilt University Alumni Clubs of Nashville and Memphis, Brooks Museum ("Jewels of the Romanovs"), Memphis, TN [December 1997, January 1998]

"Russia Today".  Shepherd=s Center "Adventures in Learning Adult Education," Belle Meade Methodist Church, Nashville, TN [13 Oct. 1997]

ANotes on the Memories of Liudmila Petrovna@ Vanderbilt University Senior Learning [Spring 1997]

ARussia=s Current Crisis: Report of an American in Russia in 1996,@ United Nations Association Foreign Affairs Seminar [Nashville, TN], October 1996

ADear Mom: My Impressions of England@ Leeds University School of History Third-Year Christmas Banquet, Leeds, UK [Dec. 1994]

AD-Day and the War in the East@, Vanderbilt University Alumni Reunion [May 1994]

AVignettes from Russian History@ (3 lectures), Vanderbilt University Alumni Trip, Russian Federation [March 1994]"

"What Happened to Theology After the Death of Christ:  Some Thoughts on the Teaching of Russian History".  Kentucky Association of Teachers of History (Frankfort, KY) [Sept. 1993]

AA Historian Ponders What Happened to the Former U.S.S.R.@ Vanderbilt University Alumni Club of Louisville [May 1992]

AEighteenth-Century Imperial Russia@, Vanderbilt University Alumni Club of Dallas [Nov. 1992]

AIs the Twentieth Century Ending on a Happy Note?  The Example of Soviet History@ Nashville Chapter of the United Nations Association [Nov. 1991]

AThe Changing U.S.S.R@ Vanderbilt University Alumni Reunion [May 1991]

AThe Russia of Catherine the Great@, Vanderbilt University Alumni Club of Memphis [April 1991]

AA Lesson in Twentieth-Century Soviet History@, Harpeth Hall Academy [Spring 1991]

AWhat Happened to the Former U.S.S.R.@ NAIOP annual dinner [autumn 1991]

AAfter the Wall Came Tumbling Down: Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the 1990s@, Belle Meade Women=s Club [April 1990]

AIraq and the U.S.S.R.,@ First Unitarian Church, Nashville [Spring 1990]

ASome Thoughts on a Changing Leningrad@, Faculty Luncheon Group [Autumn 1990]

 

 

Outside Reader/Referee

Slavic Review; Russian Review ; Cornell University Press; McGill University Press; Northern Illinois University Press; The Annenberg/CPB Project ("The Other Side of Europe"); Houghton Mifflin.

 

Professional Organizations and Service

executive committee, Southern Conference on Slavic Studies,  2002-2005

member, Orgkomitet and co-program director, VI International Colloquium (“Science and Power” [Vlast’ i nauka; nauka i vlast’]), sponsored by St. Petersburg Institute of History, European University of St. Petersburg, Rutgers University, Southern Methodist University, and Vanderbilt University: St. Petersburg, Russian Federation, June 2000

Southern Conference on Slavic Studies [Program Chair, SCSS 1998 Conference (Durham-Chapel Hill), March 1998)]

American Historical Association

American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies

Southern Conference on Slavic Studies

 

University, College, and Department Service

University

Director,  Vanderbilt-in England, University of Leeds, 1994-95

University Senator, 2002-2003, 1992-1995

Member (1989-1990) and Chair (1991), Officer Education Advisory Committee

Faculty Lecturer, Alumni Education: June 2005 (Venice-Croatia); October 2003 (St. Petersburg); December 1997 (Nashville); March 1994 (Moscow-St. Petersburg); May 1992 (Louisville); October 1992 (Dallas); April 1991 (Memphis); May 1991 (Nashville)  Interviews with local television, radio, newspapers:  November 1986 (Rekjavyk summit); December 1988 (Gorbachev at United Nations); August-December 1991 (August Revolution); summer-fall 1993 (WLAC-AM); BBC-Radio Leeds (November 1994 U.S. Congressional elections)

Contributor, Impact Magazine (February 1986) ["What Can the Historian Possibly Add?  Reflections on Russian and Soviet History"]

 

College

Chair, College Admissions Committee, 2004-5 and 1999-2001 (chair); 2003-4 ,

Chair, Faculty Working Group on Admissions and Liberal education, 1999-2000

Member, A&S Faculty Council, 1997-98, 1993-94

Member, Slavic Language and Area Center, 1984-present

Member, Western European Studies Program (guest lecturer, EUS 201, 1984-present)

Member, College Program Committee, 1997-99, 1995-96

Member, History and Culture Subcommittee of CPC, 1997-99

Member, Social Science Subcomittee of CPC, 1988-1989, 1995-96

Member, Committee on Academic Standards and Practices, 1989-1991, 1993-94

Member, Social Science Subcommittee of URC, 1990-1991

Freshman Adviser, 1986-1987

*Pre-Major Adviser, 1985-1986, 1998-2000

 

Department

Director, History Honors Program, 2000-2002; 1998-99, 1997-98, 1995-96, 1993-94, 1992-93

Chair, Promotion and Tenure Committees (McDaniel, 2000-2001; Igarashi, 1999-2000)

Director of Undergraduate Studies 1990-1994

*Member, Undergraduate Studies Committee 1989-1990, 1998-2000

Member, Graduate Studies Committee, 1997-98, 1995-1996

Member, Library Committee, 1984-1987

Recorder, 1986-1987

 

Dissertation Committees

Alison Felter Salka, AEthnonational Support in Post-Soviet Republics: Identity, Incentives, and the Role of Interethnic Relations@, VU Ph.D., 2002 (reader)

Joel Harris Dark, Jr., "Religion and Refugees in Postwar Germany," VU Ph.D., 1998

Carol Gale Woodfin, "Reluctant Democrats: Women of the Protestant Frauenhilfe and Weimar Politics, 1918-1933," VU Ph.D., 1997 (reader)