Event Host: Center for Historical Research
Short Description: Steve Smith is a Senior Research Fellow at Oxford University and Michael David-Fox is a Professor in the Department of History at Georgetown University.
On Wednesday, Nov. 8, the College will welcome two eminent scholars for a special program marking the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Steve Smith, Senior Research Fellow at Oxford University, and Michael David-Fox, Professor History at Georgetown University, will discuss the Chinese and Russian revolutions and how these events shaped our modern world.
The talk is part of the Center for Historical Research two-year program. "'You Say You Want a Revolution?' Revolutions in Comparative Perspective," which invites speakers from across disciplines to share insights on revolutions from the ancient world to the Arab Spring.
Steve Smith is the author of six books on revolution and society in Russia and China, including Revolution and the People in Russia and China: A Comparative History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). His current work is on the 'politics of the supernatural' in the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, as authorities tried to eliminate 'superstition' from daily life while ordinary people used religion and magical beliefs to manage the turbulent changes of revolution.
Michael David-Fox researches modern Russian and Soviet history and is a founding editor of the pathbreaking journal, Kritika. His recent book, Showcasing the Great Experiment: Cultural Diplomacy and Western Visitors to the Soviet Union, 1921-1941 (Oxford University Press, 2012), examines global reactions to the Russian Revolution, and he is now working on the history of the Nazi occupation of the USSR during World War II.
This talk is co-sponsored by the Russian and Eastern European Seminar and the Center East Asian Studies. For more information, please visit http://chr.osu.edu.