Professional Affiliation

Professor Emerita, Northern Illinois University

Expert Bio

With the support of the NEH, Institute of Advanced Studies in Paris, Aleksanteri Institute (University of Helsinki), and Open Society Institute, Distinguished Research Professor Emerita Christine D. Worobec (Northern Illinois University) has published widely on nineteenth-century Russian and Ukrainian peasants, women and gender issues, and religious history. Both her monographs, Peasant Russia: Family and Community in Post-Emancipation Russia (1991), and Possessed: Women, Witches, and Demons (2001) have won the Heldt Prize. She has received the 2008 Association for Slavic Women's Studies' Outstanding Achievement Award as well as more recently the 2017 ASEEES Distinguished Contributions Award. One of Worobec's latest publication, "The Long Road to Kiev: Nineteenth-Century Orthodox Pilgrimages," Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 30/31 (2014/2015): 1-24, won the American Association for Ukrainian Studies' 2017 Article Prize and has been translated into Ukrainian. Her current research project examines Orthodox pilgrimages in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus since 1700. Worobec is also working with Valerie Kivelson (University of Michigan) on a sourcebook on witchcraft in early modern and modern Russia and Ukraine.

Wilson Center Project

The Peasant Family in Russia and Russian Ukraine, 1860-1905: A Comparative Analysis

Project Summary

Compares Russian peasant families of the late nineteenth century with their contemporary counterpart in Russian Ukraine. Explores the correlations between landholding systems and family structures, responses to modernization and the effects of government legislation regarding the peasantry. Limits comparissons geographically to the central industrial and agricultural provinces.