Mayhill Fowler
Assistant Professor of History
Mayhill Fowler, Ph.D., teaches and researches the cultural history of Russia and Eastern Europe. She focuses in particular on how different kinds of state systems shape creativity, and how diversity leads to innovation. Transnational history, urban studies and theater history are among her interests. Fowler has presented at many conferences, from the United States to Russia, has several publications in edited volumes and journals, and is writing a book, Beau Monde: Stage and Stage at Empire's Edge, Russia and Soviet Ukraine 1916-1941, which explains the creation of the Soviet cultural periphery. She translates from various Slavic languages and occasionally writes for New Eastern Europe. She has taught at Princeton University, the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv and the University of Toronto. Fowler is also a former professional actress, and even performed once in Florida in 2003.
Education
- Ph.D., Princeton University, 2011
- M.A., Princeton University, 2007
- M.F.A., National Theater Conservatory, 2000
- B.A., Yale University, 1996
Course Topics
- The Russian Empire
- Soviet Eurasia
- Eastern Europe 1700s-2000s: Together and Apart in the Lands Between
- Patrons, Performers, Publics: Art and Society in Russia and the Soviet Union
- Money and the Muse: Art and Society in Global Context
- Post-Soviet Culture: Russia, Ukraine, the European Union
Selected Publications
- "A Cesspool of Intrigues: Les Kurbas, Aleksandr Dovzhenko, and the Early Soviet Ukrainian Motion Picture Industry," in Canadian Slavonic Papers, special issue on Film in Ukraine (forthcoming March 2014).
- "Na ulicy Prorizny: modernizm na Ukrainie," Przeglad Filosoficzno-literackie: kwartalnik (special issue on Modernism), 2/36 (summer 2013).
- "Yiddish Theater in Soviet Ukraine: A Re-Evaluation of Jewish-Slavic Relations in the Arts," in Ab Imperio 2011/3 (December 2011).
- "'A Theatrical Mecca': The Stages of Kyiv in 1907," Modernism in Kyiv: Jubilant Experimentation, edited by Virlana Tkacz and Irena Makaryk (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), 26-51.
- Book Review of Sergei Zhuk, Rock and Roll in the Rocket City: The West, Identity and Ideology in Soviet Dniepropetrovsk (Washington: Woodrow Wilson Institute and Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), in Canadian-American Slavic Studies (forthcoming 2013).
- Book Review of Iurii Shapoval, Poliuvannia na Val'dshnepa: Rozsekrechenyi Mykola Khvyl'ovyi (Kyiv: Tempora, 2009), in Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History (Spring 2012, 13/2), 491-501.
- "Habermas in a Habsburg Town?" Book Review of Markian Prokopovych, Habsburg Lemberg: Architecture, Public Space, and Politics in the Galician Capital, 1772-1914, for H-Urban (online).
- Book Review of William Risch, The Ukrainian West (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2011), in Canadian-American Slavic Studies (forthcoming 2013).
