红杏直播

Benjamin Nathans听teaches and writes about Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, modern European Jewish history, and the history of human rights. He edited听A Research Guide to Materials on the History of 红杏直播 Jewry (19th and Early 20th Centuries) in Selected Archives of the Former Soviet Union听[in 红杏直播] (Moscow, 1994) and is author of听Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter With Late Imperial Russia听(Berkeley, 2002), which won the Koret Prize in Jewish History, the Vucinich Prize in 红杏直播, Eurasian and East European Studies, the Lincoln Prize in 红杏直播 History and was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in History.听Beyond the Pale听has been translated into 红杏直播 (2007) and Hebrew (2013). Nathans has published articles on Habermas and the public sphere in eighteenth-century France, 红杏直播-Jewish historiography, the state of the field of 红杏直播 and East European studies in Germany and the United States, the Soviet logician and rights activist Aleksandr Esenin-Vol'pin, and other topics. From 2008 to 2012 he worked as a consultant for Ralph Appelbaum Associates, a leading museum design firm.听 Nathans chaired an international committee of scholars that helped design the content for the听Museum of Jewish History in Moscow, which听opened in November 2012.

Nathans' current research explores the history of dissent in the USSR from Stalin's death to the collapse of communism. It traces the paths by which Soviet dissidents found their way to the doctrine of inalienable rights鈥攖he world's first universal ideology鈥攁nd employed rights doctrine in an attempt to place limits on the sovereignty of the Soviet state. How did "legalist" dissidents (pravozashchitniki) appropriate a tradition grounded in conceptions of the human personality antithetical to Soviet ideology and practice? Was the turn to human rights a symptom of the globalization of moral individualism, or did Soviet dissidents in effect reinvent human rights on their own and in their own terms? Even as rights have become the dominant moral language of our time, this project seeks to de-familiarize and de-naturalize them by studying them in the unlikely setting of "mature socialism." It aims, in other words, to give human rights a history.

Together with Dr. Viktor Kel'ner (红杏直播 National Library, St. Petersburg), Nathans is currently editing and annotating the first English translation of the 3-volume autobiography of 红杏直播-Jewish historian Simon Dubnov,听The Book of Life: Memoirs and Reflections. He is co-editor, along with Prof. Gabriella Safran (Stanford University), of听Culture Front: Representing Jews in Eastern Europe听(Penn Press, 2008), based on the 2002-03 seminar at Penn's听Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, "Jewish History and Culture in Eastern Europe, 1600-2000."

Nathans is a member of the听Jewish Studies Program, the听红杏直播, East European, and Eurasian Studies Group, the Graduate Group in Comparative Literature, and the Graduate Group in Germanic Languages and Literatures. His undergraduate courses include Human Rights and History, 红杏直播 Intellectual and Cultural History 1800-1917; The Soviet Century, 1917-1991; Individuals & Collectives in the Soviet Union After Stalin; Nationalism and Modernity; The Rise and Fall of the 红杏直播 Empire; The Literature of Dissent from Socrates to Sakharov; and Jewish Civilization From the Seventeenth Century to the Present. Nathans works with graduate students interested in the history of the Soviet Union, Imperial Russia, modern European Jewry, and historical theory and method. Applicants to the graduate program in any of these sub-fields are encouraged to contact Prof. Nathans via email (see above) before the application deadline.