People > Faculty

nancy kollmann

Nancy Kollmann

William H. Bonsall Professor of History

E-mail: kollmann@stanford.edu

Full Contact Information

At Stanford Since 1982

M.A., Ph.D., Harvard University, 1974, 1980; B.A., Middlebury College, 1972

Research Interests

Intersection of political practice and social values in early modern Russia, that is from the rise of Moscow by the fifteenth century through the eighteenth. Legal culture in Muscovy and eighteenth-century Russia, that is, how people used the law, how judges and other officials played roles in the system, how the law was written and interpreted. The problem of the "Petrine revolution" in general -- how to come to grips with the transformations and continuities we see between Muscovy and eighteenth-century Russia. Concepts and practices of honor. Mechanisms of social integration and stability in early modern Russia, as well as strategies of contestation and difference with dominant cultures. Classics of Russian historiography regarding Russia before Peter I.

Courses Taught

Lecture Courses

  • Early Modern Russia, 1400-1800
  • Aristocracies and Absolutism: Early Modern Eastern Europe, 1400-1800

Undergraduate Colloquia

  • "Men, Women and Power in Early Modern Russia"
  • "Women, Marriage and Family in Early Modern West and Eastern Europe"
  • “Honor, Law and Modernity in Early Modern Europe and Russia.”
  • "Freshman Seminar: Peter the Great: Man and Myth"
  • "Early Russian Culture: Belief and Practice – Sophomore College"
  • "Europe confronts the East European Other – Freshman Seminar"

Graduate Courses

  • Research seminar in early modern Russia and colloquia on Russian historiography with particular attention to the premodern era.
  • Various specialized topics such as governance, identity and national consciousness, and social values (with primary focus on 16-18th centuries).

Publications

  • "The Seclusion of Elite Muscovite Women," Russian History 10, pt. 2 (1983): 170-87.
  • "Ritual and Social Drama at the Muscovite Court," Slavic Review 45, no. 3 (Fall 1986): 486-502.
  • "Consensus Politics: The Dynastic Crisis of the 1490s Reconsidered," Russian Review 45, no. 3 (1986): 235-67.
  • Kinship and Politics: The Making of the Muscovite Political System, 1345-1547, Stanford University Press, l987. 324 pp.
  • "Was There Honor in Kiev Rus'?" Jahrbucher für Geschichte Osteuropas 36, no. 4 (October 1988): 481-92.
  • "Collateral Succession in Kievan Rus'," Harvard Ukrainian Studies, 14, no. 3/4 (1990): 377-87.
  • The New Cambridge Medieval History: vol. 6, "The Rus' Principalities in the Fourteenth Century"; vol. 7, "Russia in the Fifteenth Century."
  • "Problema chesti zhenshchin v Moskovskoi Rusi [The Problem of Women's Honor in Muscovite Russia]," Sotsial'naia istoriia. 1998/99 (Moscow, 1999), 205-16.
  • "Women's Honor in Early Modern Russia," in Russia's Women: Accommodation, Resistance, Transformation, ed. Barbara Evans Clements, Barbara Alpern Engel and Christine D. Worobec (Berkeley, 1991), pp. 60-73.
  • "Honor and Dishonor in Early Modern Russia," Forschungen zur osteuropäischen Geschichte 46: 131-46.
  • "Concepts of Society and Social Identity in Early Modern Russia" in Baron and Kollmann, eds., Religion and Culture in Early Modern Russia and Ukraine(1997)
  • "Muscovite Russia, 1450-1598," Russia: A History, ed. Gregory Freeze (New York, 1997), pp. 27-54.
  • "Pilgrimage, Procession and Symbolic Space in Sixteenth-Century Russian Politics" in Medieval Russian Culture, Vol. II (Berkeley, 1994), pp. 163-81.
  • By Honor Bound. State and Society in Early Modern Russia (Cornell University Press, 1999).
  • "Murder in the Hoover Archive," The Rhetoric of the Medieval Slavic World. Essays presented to Edward L. Keenan, Harvard Ukrainian Studies 19 (1995): 324-34.
  • "Convergence, Expansion, and Experimentation: Current Trends in Muscovite History-Writing," Kritika 2, no. 2 (2001): 233-40. Updated and anthologized in After the Fall. Essays in Russian and Soviet Historiography (Bloomington, IN, 2004), 9-22.
  • "The Extremes of Patriarchy: Spousal Abuse and Murder in Early Modern Russia," Russian History 25 nos. 1-2 (1998): 133-40
  • "'What's Love Got to Do With It?': Changing Models of Masculinity in Muscovite and Petrine Russia in Barbara Evans Clements, Rebecca Friedman and Dan Healey, eds., Russian Masculinities in History and Culture (London, 2002 ), pp. 15-32.
  • "Russian Law in a Eurasian Setting: The Arzamas Region, Late Seventeenth - Early Eighteenth Century," in Gyula Szvak, ed., The Place of Russia in Europe (Budapest, 2001),200-6.
  • "Lynchings and Legality in Early Modern Russia," Forschungen zur osteuropäïschen Geschichte 56 (2002): 1801-6
  • “Romancing the Sources,” in Adventures in Historical Research: Reminiscences of American scholars from the Cold War to the Present (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2003), pp. 153-64.
  • “Gender and the Problem of Muscovite Particularities,” in Gyula Szvak, ed., Muscovy: The Peculiarities of its Development (Budapest, 2003), pp. 34-41.
  • “Judicial Autonomy in the Criminal Law: Beloozero and Arzamas,”in Die Geschichte Russlands im 16. Und 17. Jahrhundert aus der Perspektive seiner Regionen, ed. Andreas Kappeler [Forschungen zur osteuropäïschen Geschichte] (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2004), 252-68.
  • “Self, Society and Gender in Early Modern Russia and Eastern Europe,” Teresa A. Meade and Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, eds, A Companion to Gender History (London: Blackwell, 2004), 358-70.
  • "Society and Identity," Modernizing Muscovy: Reform and Social Change in Seventeenth-Century Muscovy, ed. Jarmo Kotilaine and Marshall Poe (London and New York: Routledge, 2004),417-31.
  • Associate Editor, Europe. 1450 to 1789. Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World, ed. Jonathan Dewald (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2004).
  • “Law and Society in Seventeenth-Century Russia,” in Maureen Perrie, ed. Cambridge History of Russia (Cambridge, 2006), 559-78.
  • “The Quality of Mercy in Early Modern Legal Practice” Kritika 7, 1 (2006): 5-22. 
  • “The Cap of Monomakh,” Picturing Russia: Visual Documents Reader, ed. Valerie Kivelson and Joan Neuberger (Yale University Press, 2007).

Edited Collections

  • Major Problems in Early Modern Russian History (New York: Garland Publishing, 1992). Collection of ca. 15 seminal essays with brief introduction.
  • With Samuel H. Baron, Religion and Culture in Early Modern Russia and Ukraine (DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois Univ. Press, 1997)
  • With Andrei Pliguzov, Donald Ostrowski and Daniel Rowland, eds., Rhetoric of the Medieval Slavic World. Essays presented to Edward L. Keenan on his Sixtieth Birthday, Harvard Ukrainian Studies 19, 1997
  • Editor with Harvey Goldblatt, "Language and History in the Many Rus' Cultures: Essays in Honor of Michael Flier,"Harvard Ukrainian Studies 28 (forthcoming)

Awards

  • 2007-8: Faculty Research, Stanford Humanities Center
  • 2007 Kahn-Van Slyke Award for Graduate Mentoring, Dept. of History
  • 2003-4: Stanford Institute for International Studies Faculty Research Fellow
  • 2003-4: National Endowment for Humanities Faculty Research Fellowship
  • 2003-4: American Philosophical Society Sabbatical Fellowship
  • June 2002: Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching for 2002
  • 1998-99: Internal Faculty Fellowship, Stanford Humanities Center
  • 1994-95: John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship
  • 1976-77, 1986, 1995: International Research and Exchanges Board fellowships for research travel to Russia
  • 1976-77, 1986, 1998 (deferred): Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad fellowship
  • 1993: National Endowment for Humanities Summer Stipend
  • 1986: National Endowment for the Humanities Independent Study and Research Fellowship
  • 1984-85: Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching, Stanford University

University Service

  • Director of Graduate Studies, 2006-7
  • Co-Director of Graduate Teaching Program, 2006-
  • Director, Center for Russian, Eastern European and Eurasian Studies, Stanford, 1995 - 2007
  • Member, Committee for Undergraduate Studies (chair 2002-3), 2000 - 2003
  • Appointments and Promotions Committee, School of Humanities and Sciences, 2005 - 2007

Professional Service

  • Executive Committee, National Council for East European and Eurasian Research (NCEEER) 2006-
  • Member at Large, Board of Directors, American Assoc. for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, 1995 - 1997
  • Chair, Visiting Committee for Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1993, 1998, 2002