Mara Kozelsky

Professor

Department of History

Publications

Oxford University Press, 2019
Honorable Mention Marshall D. Shulman Prize, 2020

russott

University of Wisconsin Press, 2014

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Northern Illinois University/Cornell Press, 2009

Chicago University Press 2008

Current Research

The Sea of Azov in Historic Perspective

Planned as a short book, The Sea of Azov in Historical Perspective provides historic context for the high stakes war between Russia and Ukraine by examining the Sea of Azov from multiple angles: history, commerce, law, infrastructure, geology, and ecology. My approach borrows from environmental history theories that emphasize the agency of the earth in human affairs, as well as human impacts on the natural environment. I am particularly interested in the historical periods in which the Sea of Azov was managed by multiple political entities, as well as infrastructure projects that wrapped the small, shallow sea into extensive Eurasian trade networks. The book will start with the ancient Greek colonies in the Azov and proceed chronologically to the present. Concluding chapters will analyze Russian ambitions for the sea, including the Crimean Bridge built in 2016.

Articles and Chapters

“The Crimean War,” Handbook on the History and Culture of the Black Sea Region. Edited by Ninja Bumann, Kerstin S. Jobst, Stefan Rohdewald, Stefan Troebst. De Gruyter, forthcoming.
“Crimean civilians and the Crimean War,” an article solicited for The Routledge Handbook of the Crimean War. Edited by Candan Badem. Routledge, 2022.
Mara Kozelsky (2020) Structural violence in the confessional state: the creation of a Crimean diocese, 1768–1860, Canadian Slavonic Papers, 62:3-4, 271-295, DOI: 10.1080/00085006.2020.1800561

“Religion and the Crisis in Ukraine,” International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church.” 14:3 (2014): 219-241.
“Sermons of the Crimean War” (Introduction to and translation of) in Orthodox Christianity in Imperial Russia: A Sourcebook on Lived Religion. Indiana University Press, (August 2014).
“A Borderland Mission: The Russian Orthodox Church in the Black Sea Region,” Russian History 40 (2013): 111-132.
“Bishop in the Borderland: Archbishop Innokentii (Borisov), 1800-1857,” People of Empire: Lives of Culture and Power in Russian Eurasia, 1500-Present, edited Stephen M. Norris and Willard Sunderland. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012.
“The Crimean War, 1853-1856,” Kritika 13.4 (2012): 903-917.
“Casualties of Conflict: Crimean Tatars during the Crimean War,” Slavic Review 67.4 (2008): 862-891.
“Ruins into Relics: The Monument to St. Vladimir on the excavations of Chersonesos, 1827-1857,” Russian Review 63.4 (2004): 655–672.

Courses

HY 102 Western Civilization II
HY 246 History of the USSR
HY 337 History of Eastern Europe
HY 338 History of Russia
HY 401/501 History of Holy War, from Early Times to the Present
HY 442 Undergraduate Research Seminar: History of War in Russia
HY 442 Undergraduate Research Seminar: History of Holy War
HY 444/544 Digital History/Historic Preservation
HY 451 States, Nations, and Nationalism (W)
HY 457/557 Stalin’s Russia
HY 457/557 History of Eastern Christianity
HY 457/557 Americans in the Crimean War
HY 457/557 The Ends of Wars (War Termination)
HY 540 Modern European Historiography
HY 542 World Historiography
HY 590 Europe and Empire