Mayhill Fowler

Professor of History

Mayhill Fowler teaches and researches the cultural history of Ukraine and Eastern Europe. She focuses in particular on theater history, and more broadly, how different kinds of state systems shape creativity, and how diversity leads to innovation. She is a former actress, trained in history at Princeton, and has taught at the University of Toronto, the Ukrainian Catholic University and at various summer schools across Ukraine. Her teaching centers on global citizenship, on educating students about Eastern Europe, and on connecting the classroom with the world outside the university.

  • PhD, history, Princeton University, 2011
  • MA, history, Princeton University, 2007
  • MFA, acting, National Theater Conservatory, 2000
  • BA, Russian, Yale University, 1996

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Mayhill Fowler

Biography

Mayhill C. Fowler, PhD, is professor of history at Stetson. She is also affiliated faculty in the Program in Theater Studies at Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, and an affiliated researcher with the Center for Urban History in Lviv. She holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University, and has held fellowships at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, the University of Toronto, and was a Fulbright scholar to Ukraine 2019-2020. She has published widely on culture in Ukraine, including her book Beau Monde on Empire's Edge: State and Stage in Soviet Ukraine (Toronto, 2017), which is now in Ukrainian translation (Rodovid, 2025). She is currently working on two projects: a book on women in theater in Ukraine across the long 20th century, Theatre Women: Place and Performance in 20th Century Ukraine, and a biography of the former Soviet Army Theater in Lviv, A Theater of Silence: War and Memory in Ukraine. She is the editor of Krzysztof Czyzewski’s Toward Xenopolis: Visions from the Borderland (Rochester, 2022). She is a member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in New York and on the academic organizing committee of the Danyliw Seminar in Ukrainian Studies. She also holds an MFA in Acting from the National Theater Conservatory and is a former actress. 

More About Mayhill Fowler

Areas of Expertise

  • Ukraine
  • Theater
  • Culture in Eastern Europe
  • Eastern European history
  • Soviet history
  • Art and Politics

Course Sampling

  • Modern Western Civilization
  • The Russian Empire
  • The Soviet Century
  • Eastern Europe
  • Empire, Power, Culture: An Introduction to Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies
  • Money and the Muse in Russia: Methodologies of Cultural History
  • Revolutionary Stages: Theater and Activism in Ukraine and Russia
  • Gender, Violence, and War in 20th century Eastern Europe
  • Truth and Terror: Witnessing Eastern Europe's 20th century

  • History of Ukraine
  • Theater history
  • Gender and the arts
  • Theater and memory
  • Jewish history and culture

Book

  • Beau Monde on Empire’s Edge: State and Stage in Soviet Ukraine (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017; paperback 2023); finalist for Ivan Franko Prize for best book on Ukraine, 2020; Ukrainian translation, Rodovid Press, Kyiv, 2025.

Selected Journal Articles

  • “’I decided to be silent’: Dina Pronicheva, Theater, and Trauma in Wartime Soviet Ukraine,” Polin. Studies in Polish Jewry forthcoming 2025.
  • “Views from our Terraces,” with Sofia Dyak, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, vol. 25, no. 1 (Winter 2024): 131-141.
  • "Soviet Ghosts: The Former Theater of the Soviet Army in Lviv and Post-Socialism as a Cultural Crisis,” Nationalities Papers; published online March 8, 2022. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/nps.2021.78
  • “Comrade Actress: The Everyday Life of the Theatrical Avant-Garde,” Ukraina Moderna vol. 29 (Summer 2021): 289-312.
  • “Introduction: Ukraine in Revolution, 1917-1922” and “The Geography of Revolutionary Art,” in Critical Discussion Forum organized with contributions by three other scholars for Slavic Review, vol. 78, no. 4 (2020): 931-934 and 957-964.
  • "Jews, Ukrainians, Soviets?: Backstage in the Yiddish Theaters of Soviet Ukraine," Jewish Culture and History, vol. 18, no. 2 (Spring 2017): 152-169; republished in translation by Svitlana Brehman, Naukovy zapysky tovarystva Shevchenka, vol. 263 “Pratsi Teatroznavchoi komisii” (Lviv, 2020): 143-163. 
  • "Beyond Ukraine or Little Russia: Going Global with Culture in Ukraine," The Future of the Past: New Perspectives on Ukrainian History, ed. Serhii Plokhy (Cambridge: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 2016), 249-274; reprinted in Harvard Ukrainian Studies, vol. 34, no. 1-4 (2015-2016): 259-286. 
  • "Mikhail Bulgakov, Mykola Kulish, and Soviet Theater: How Internal Transnationalism Remade Center and Periphery," Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, vol. 16, no. 2 (Spring 2015): 263-290.

Book Chapters

  • “Halychanky: rukh ta gender u teatral’nomu zhytti radians’koho stolittia” Galicia Girls: Movement and Gender in the Theatrical Life of the Soviet Century,” ?????? ?????? ????????: ????????, ???????, ????????????? / Women’s Dimensions of the Past: Imagination, Experiences, Representation, ed. Oksana Kis (Lviv: Center for Urban History, 2023), 223-232. 
  • “Studio Theater in Wartime Kyiv: The Gender of the Archive and Locating the Actress,” Building Modern Jewish Culture: The Yiddish Kultur-Lige, edited by Harriet Murav, Gennady Estraikh, and Myroslav Shkandrij, Studies in Yiddish, 20 (Cambridge: Legenda, 2023), 140-156.