Russia
Population: 140,041,247 (July 2009 est.)
Government: federation; Chief of State: President Dmitriy Anatolyevich Medvedev (since May 7, 2008); Head of Government: Premier Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (since May 8, 2008).
Pitt Experts:
- Daniel Berkowitz—comparative systems, transition economies, applied micro, post-socialist transition economies
- William Chase—Russian and Soviet history, modern European history, urban history, international Communist movements
Nancy Condee—contemporary Russian culture and cultural politics, imperial and postcolonial theory, and post-Soviet popular culture
- Christina Groark—children, youth, and families; care of children in Russian orphanages
- Jonathan Harris—comparative politics, USSR and Russian Federation, international politics, Russian foreign policy
- Robert McCall—children, youth, and families; care of children in Russian orphanages
Vladimir Padunov—Russian cultural and intellectual history, Russian visual and popular culture, film history
Office of child development
Christina Groark
Associate professor of education and codirector of Pitt's Office of Child Development
Office: 412-244-5303
cgroark@pitt.edu
For assistance in reaching this faculty member, contact
Sharon Blake
office: 412-624-4364
cell: 412-277-6926
blake@pitt.edu
Areas of Expertise
Children, youth, and families; care of children in Russian orphanages.
Background
Pitt’s Office of Child Development (OCD) is re-training caregivers and making structural changes at orphanages in St. Petersburg, Russia, in an effort to promote more responsive caregiving for the children, who range in age from birth to 4 years.
OCD’s intervention team has brought about improved mental, physical, and socio-emotional conditions among the babies, and a better outlook among the caregivers. Because resources are scarce and orphanages are not a social-political priority, the system has been difficult to change Recently, however, scholars in the Russian Federation have called for changes in the care environment.
Robert McCall
Professor of psychology and codirector of Pitt's Office of Child Development
Office: 412-244-5421
mccall2@pitt.edu
For assistance in reaching this faculty member, contact
Sharon Blake
office: 412-624-4364
cell: 412-277-6926
blake@pitt.edu
Areas of Expertise
Children, youth, and families; care of children in Russian orphanages.
Background
Pitt’s Office of Child Development (OCD) is re-training caregivers and making structural changes at orphanages in St. Petersburg, Russia, in an effort to promote more responsive caregiving for the children, who range in age from birth to 4 years.
OCD’s intervention team has brought about improved mental, physical, and socio-emotional conditions among the babies, and a better outlook among the caregivers. Because resources are scarce and orphanages are not a social-political priority, the system has been difficult to change Recently, however, scholars in the Russian Federation have called for changes in the care environment.
Department of Economics
Daniel Berkowitz
Professor,
Department of Economics,
School of Arts and Sciences
office: 412-648-7072
dmberk@pitt.edu
Faculty Bio
Web site
For assistance in reaching this faculty member, contact
Sharon Blake
office: 412-624-4364
cell: 412-277-6926
blake@pitt.edu
Areas of Expertise
Comparative systems, transition economies, applied micro, post-socialist transition economies
Background
A member of the executive board of the National Council for East European and Eurasian Research, Berkowitz is coeditor of the Journal of Comparative Economics and director of graduate studies for Pitt’s economics department. He has published more than 20 research papers and books, including “The Evolving Pattern of Internal Market Integration in Russia,” Economics of Transition (2001) and "Entrepreneurship and the Evolution of Income Distributions in Poland and Russia," (with John E. Jackson), in the Journal of Comparative Economics (2006).
department of history
William Chase
Professor, Department of History, School of Arts and Sciences
office: 412-628-7470
wchase@pitt.edu
Faculty Bio
For assistance in reaching this faculty member, contact
Patricia Lomando White
office: 412-624-9101
cell: 412-215-9932
laer@pitt.edu
Areas of Expertise
Russian and Soviet history, modern European history, urban history, international Communist movements
Background
A professor of history, Chase is at work on Murder Most Sacred, Murder Most Foul, a book-length manuscript that uses the assassination of Leon Trotsky to examine the rise and nature of threat construction, scapegoating, conspiratorial worldviews, and political violence among communists in the USSR, Spain, Mexico, and the United States in 1935-40.
Chase's published books include Enemies within the Gates? The Comintern and the Stalinist Repression, 1934–39 (Yale, 2001); Workers, Society and the Soviet State: Labor and Life in Moscow, 1918–1929 (University of Illinois Press, 1987, 1990); and Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Ekonomiki Putevoditel, with Jeffrey Burds, E.A. Tiurina, S.V. Pasolova, A.K. Sokolov (Moscow, 1994).
Department of Political Science
Jonathan Harris
Associate professor,
Department of Political Science,
School of Arts and Sciences
office: 412-648-7257
jonharri@pitt.edu
Faculty Bio
For assistance in reaching this faculty member, contact
Patricia Lomando White
office: 412-624-9101
cell: 412-215-9932
laer@pitt.edu
Areas of Expertise
Comparative politics, USSR and Russian Federation, international politics, Russian foreign policy
Background
Harris is the editor of the University of Pittsburgh Press’ Russian and East European Series and a core faculty member for Pitt’s Center for Russian and East European Studies. He is the author of many books and publications, including The Split in Stalin's Secretariat (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2008), Subverting the System: Gorbachev's Reform of the Party's Apparat (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), and Transforming Post-Communist Political Economies (National Academy Press [with David N. DeJong], chapter 8, 1997).
DEPARTMENT OF SLAVIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES
Nancy Condee
University of Pittsburgh Professor Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Film Studies Program 412-624-5906 (office); 412-363-7180 (home); condee@pitt.edu Faculty Bio
For assistance in reaching this faculty member, contact
Patricia Lomando White
office: 412-624-9101
cell: 412-215-9932
laer@pitt.edu
Areas of Expertise
Russian culture and cultural politics, film
Background
Nancy Condee is a specialist in contemporary Russian culture and cultural politics, imperial and postcolonial theory, and post-Soviet popular culture. She is a film scholar in Pitt’s Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and is on Pitt’s Film Studies faculty.
A former senior associate member of St. Antony’s College at Oxford University and a member of the Russian Guild of Cinema Scholars and Critics (Union of Cinematographers of the Russian Federation), Condee, for more than a decade, has been one of two U.S. scholars annually invited to and supported by the Kinotavr Film Festival (Sochi), Russia’s leading postsocialist film festival. She served for six years as chair of the board of directors of the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, the largest U.S. grant agency for social-science research in the former socialist bloc.
Condee is coeditor of the journal Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema. Her latest book is The Imperial Trace: Recent Russian Cinema (Oxford University Press).
Vladimir Padunov
Associate professor, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures; associate director, Film Studies Program, Center for Russian and European Studies
office: 412-624-5713
home: 412-363-7180
padunov@pitt.edu
Faculty Bio
For assistance in reaching this faculty member, contact
Patricia Lomando White
office: 412-624-9101
cell: 412-215-9932
laer@pitt.edu
Areas of Expertise
Russian culture and intellectual history, Russian visual and popular culture, film history
Background
Padunov teaches courses on the history of Russo-Soviet cinema, contemporary Russian media, and the history of Russian popular culture.
His publications have appeared in The Harriman Institute Forum, Isskustvo kino, The Nation, New Formations, New Left Review, October, Voprosy literatury, and Wide Angle. They include Star Above Almaty: Kazakh Cinema Between 1998 and 2003 (2004); On the Benefits of Cine-Lingualism (1998); Views of the Present as Visions of the Past (1996); and ‘Large Loose Baggy Monsters:’ The Poetics of Excess in Contemporary Russian Culture (1996).
Padunov is the deputy editor of Kinokultura, an electronic journal on the contemporary Russian film industry. Every May since 1999, he has directed the annual Russian Film Symposium in Pittsburgh. Together with Pitt professor Nancy Condee, he directed the Working Group on Contemporary Russian Culture (1990-93), supported by the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council.