Irina Mukhina, Ph.D

Associate Professor of History

508-767-7024 Founders Hall - Room 106

Degrees Earned

Ph.D. History, Distinction, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA
M.A., Distinction, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA
B.A., Summa Cum Laude; Honors, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, MA

Undergraduate Courses Taught

West and the World to 1770 (part I)
West and the World, 1770 to present (part II)
Pre-revolutionary Russia
Soviet Russia: Honors
Russia since 1917
Seminar: Fall of Communism
Pro-Seminar: Gorbachev to Putin
Terror in the 20th century: a Global Perspective
World History (Tagaste)
Colloquium: Stalinist Russia
Colloquium: Central Asia
Central/Eastern Europe, with a travel component (Prague, Bratislava, Vienna, Budapest)

Publications & Editorships

Rural Women in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Russia, Routledge, August 2010. – winner of the Outstanding Academic Titles of the Year Award by CHOICE (2011).

The Germans of the Soviet Union, Routledge, 2007 (hardcover), 2011 (paperback). – “This is an empirically rich book in the best tradition of monographs on ethnic groups in the Soviet Union. It is an excellent gateway into exploring lives of millions of people, the largest ethnic contingent among them being Germans.” – Europe-Asia Studies, June 2008

“Gendered Division of Labor among Special Settlers in the Soviet Union, 1941-1956,” Women’s History Review, (forthcoming).

“To Be Like All But Different: Germans in Soviet Trudarmee,” Europe-Asia Studies, Volume 63, No. 5, July 2011, pp. 857-874.

“Paired and Non-paired Courses as a Predictor of Learning Outcomes in Freshmen World History Surveys,” International Journal of Learning, Volume 17 (Winter 2011), pp. 57-67.

“Regulating the Trade: International Peddling in Post-Soviet Russia,” The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 37 (2010), pp. 166-186.

“(Soviet) Women in the post-Soviet Shuttle Trade,” Journal of Social History, Volume 43, Number 2 (Winter 2009), pp. 341-359.

“New Losses, New Opportunities: Russian Women at the Time of Transition, 1985-95,” a chapter in K.E. Hendrickson, N.C.J. Pappas, eds., From the Remote to the Recent Past, (Atiner, 2008), pp. 215-229.

Review essay, “Russia’s Path from Gorbachev to Putin: the Demise of the Soviet System and the New Russia,” Science & Society, Volume 73, Number 3 (July 2008) (editorial review only).

“New Revelations from the Former Soviet Archives: The Kremlin, the Warsaw Uprising, and the Coming of the Cold War,” Cold War History, Volume 6, No. 3, August 2006, pp. 397-411.

“‘The Forgotten History’: Ethnic German Women in Soviet Exile, 1941-1955,” Europe-Asia Studies (formerly Soviet Studies, UK), Volume 57, Number 5, July 2005. Kisebbségkutatás (Minorities Research; Hungarian), No. 1, 2006.

Melissa Caldwell, Dacha Idylls: Living Organically in the Russian Countryside, for Europe-Asia Studies (July 2012).

Lynne Attwood, Gender and Housing in Soviet Russia, for Europe-Asia Studies, (March 2011).

David Foglesong, The American Mission and the “Evil Empire”: The Crusade for a “Free Russia” since 1881, for History: Reviews of New Books, vol. 36, no. 2, (Winter 2008), p. 76.

“Iron Guard,” “Siege of Odessa, 1941,” and “Romanian Peasant Uprising 1907”, under contract for the Balkans at War Encyclopedia.

“Forced Migration in USSR, 1918-1945,” and “Women in Soviet Central Asia,” in World History Encyclopedia, Vol. VIII, 1900-1945 (ABC-CLIO, 2010)

“Expulsion of Germans from Eastern Europe,” “Chechnya,” and “Boris Yeltsin,” in World History Encyclopedia, Vol. IX, 1945-2005 (ABC-CLIO, 2010)

“Kosygin, Alexei Nikolaevich,” in Encyclopedia of Arab-Israeli Wars (ABC-CLIO, 2008)

Presentations

“Versace at all cost or no cost? or why ‘valuable fakes’ matter,” presented at the World Economic History Congress, July 11-15, 2012, Stellenbosch, South Africa. 

“Gender in History through the Prism of Social Sciences: Multi-disciplinary Approaches to Historical Developments in the Context of Soviet Studies,” presented at the European Social Science History Conference, Glasgow, Scotland, April 11-14, 2012. Also Chair for: “Trying to regulate migration.” 

“New Perspectives on the Apogee of Stalin’s Terror, 1937-1938 – A Panel in Memory of Leopold Haimson.” Discussant. 43rd Annual National Convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, Washington DC, November 17-20, 2011. 

“New Approaches to Teaching China in Freshmen World History Surveys,” presented at the World History Association Convention, Beijing, China, July 7-10, 2011. Also Chair for: “Finding New Links: the Relationship between China and the Americas.” 

“Suffering through the Prism of Gender: A Case Study of German Deportees,” presented at the Making Sense of: Suffering International Conference, Prague, Czech Republic, November 11-13, 2010. 

“Origins of the Soviet Shuttle Trade,” presented at the World Congress of the International Council for the Central and East European Studies, Stockholm, July 26-30, 2010 

“Paired and Non-paired Courses as a Predictor of Learning Outcomes in Freshmen History Surveys,” presented at the International Conference on Learning and Creative & Imaginative Futures for Education, Hong Kong, July 6-9, 2010 

“International Peddling and Legislative Changes in Post-Soviet Russia, presented at the XVth World Economic History Congress, Utrecht, the Netherlands, August 3-7, 2009. 

“Women and Capitalism in Russia,” Annual National Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Philadelphia, PA, November 2008. 

“Can Germans in Russia be Russians in Germany?” presented at the International Workshop “German Migrants and European Development: In-Migration, Acculturation and Identity from the 18th Century to the Present Day,” Liverpool, UK, September 5-6, 2008. 

“Gender and Success: Some Aspects of Global Market in Russia,” presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, in affiliation with WSSA, Denver, CO, April 2008. 

“New Losses, New Opportunities: Women in the Russian Shuttle Business, 1985-1995,” presented at the 5th Annual International Conferences, ATINER, Athens, Greece, December 28-31, 2007. 

“Soviet Deportations and Ethnic Identity: a Case Study of Ethnic Germans in the USSR,” presented at the Annual Conference of the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies, Cambridge, UK, March 31-April 2, 2007. 

“To Be Like All but Different: Soviet Trudarmees,” presented at the 38th National Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Washington, DC, November 16-19, 2006. 

“Gendered Division of Labor among Special Settlers, 1941-56,” presented at the XIV International Economic History Congress, Helsinki, Finland, August 21-25, 2006.

Grants and Awards

Faculty Development Grant, Assumption College, Summer 2008; Summer 2010; Summer 2012.

The Outstanding Academic Titles of the Year Award by CHOICE, for Rural Women, 2011.

Donald and Helene White Prize for an outstanding dissertation in any field of social sciences, Boston College, 2006.

Junior Scholar Grant from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, to present research findings at the XIV International Economic History Congress, Helsinki, Finland, August 21-25, 2006

Ida B. Wells Graduate Student Award for the best historical dissertation by a woman, awarded by the Coordinating Council for Women in History, 2005.

Travel Grant, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 2006.