Zukhra Kasimova

Education

• Ph.D., University of Illinois at Chicago, 2023
• M.A., Central European University, Budapest, 2016
• B.A., Uzbek World Languages University, 2010

Teaching and Research Interests

• Russian Imperial, Soviet, and Eurasian History
• Modern Central Asian History
• Soviet Cultural History of the Cold War

Courses

• HIST 132: Modern Europe
• HIST 248: Soviet Experiment: Nation- and Empire-Building
• HIST 251: Russian Empire from Peter the Great to Vladimir Putin
• HIST 252: Cold War Frenemies: Warm Encounters with Soviets
• HIST 335: Russia and the World

Publications

Peer-Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters

• “Friendship of the Peoples and Kinship Ties Reconfigured: The Rise of the Shamakhmudovs as Patriarchs of the Soviet Family of Nations,” forthcoming.
• “The Improbable Museum: Igor Savitsky’s Art Museum in Nukus as an Artifact of Postwar Soviet Reality,” in Ab Imperio 3 (2019): 119-143. DOI: 10.1353/imp.2019.0067.
• “Nevozmozhnii Muzei v Arhivnyh Dokumentah,” Ab Imperio 3 (2019): 144-255 (selection of primary sources in Russian). DOI: 10.1353/imp.2019.0068.

On teaching

• “Reflections on Teaching New Soviet History and Russian Imperial History from a Multiethnic Perspective” Ab Imperio, 2/2024, pp. 149-169. DOI: 10.1353/imp.2024.a936959.

Monographs (in preparation)

• Hybrid Soviet(ness): Modernity, Nationality, and Provinciality in Postwar Central Asia, 1941-1985
• Indigenization from Below: Blending Karakalpak National Primitivism with Soviet Modernism in the Savitsky Art Museum