2016 Mary Zirin Prize 

The Association for Women in Slavic Studies is pleased to announce Dr. Margaret Samu as the recipient of the 2016 Mary Zirin Prize for independent scholarship.

 

Dr. Samu received her PhD from New York University's Institute of Fine Arts in 2010, specializing in art history. The list of Dr. Samu's activities and accomplishments is impressive. She currently maintains adjunct positions at New York University, Parson's School of Design at the New School, and the Stern College for Women at Yeshiva University, while maintaining an active schedule of conference presentations. Dr. Samu serves as a lecturer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she has previously been a Fellow, research assistant, and translator. Her museum experience includes time at the Neue Gallery in New York and the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg.
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Ask Aleksandra!

MICHELLE LAMARCHE MARRESE (1964-2016)

It is with great sadness and sorrow that I must inform the loving community of AWSS that one of our members and dear friends, Michelle Lamarche Marrese, died this past weekend of 29-30 October. On behalf of the organization, I would like to express our collective condolences to Michelle's family and friends. A trailblazing scholar in Imperial Russian women's and gender history, a fixture at the Russian archives of RGADA and RGIA, and a cheerleader for all our work, Michelle will be sorely missed. May she rest in peace!

In preparing this announcement, I had the pained pleasure of rereading all of the online reviews that I could find of Michelle's authoritative A Woman's Kingdom: Noblewomen and the Control of Property in Russia, 1700-1861 (Cornell University Press, 2002). The reviews form a testament to Michelle's phenomenal legacy as a scholar. Indeed, I have rarely seen so many superlatives with regard to a single monograph: "definitive," "path-breaking," "creative and daring," "immensely authoritative," "a marvelous and pioneering work," "meticulously researched and tightly argued," "a prodigious feat of research," "a study of remarkable clarity and insight," "an example of women's history at its best," and finally, "a tour de force of historical imagination and good detective work." With "impressive linguistic, quantitative, and analytical skills," Michelle examined an astounding 8,000 provincial notarial records of property transactions, a sample of 133 wills, and countless other sources to demonstrate the ways in which the patriarchal Russian noble society allowed women through a key 1753 law to have control over their own property in marriage, how women exercised that property right, and the ways in which they defended it before the courts. As owners and managers of property, Russian noblewomen enjoyed rights that distinguished them from their European and American counterparts and allowed them to play public roles that blurred the boundary between the public and private. Given her exemplary scholarship, it is little wonder that Michelle was invited to contribute entries to the prestigious Cambridge History of Russia, the Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History, and the Encyclopedia of Russian History.

In 2011 Michelle won the esteemed Heldt Prize for the best article in Slavic/Eastern European/Eurasian Women's Studies for her brilliant article "'The Poetics of Everyday Behavior' Revisited: Lotman, Gender, and the Evolution of Russian Noble Identity," Kritika 11.4 (Fall 2010). There and in another article on Princess Dashkova and the politics of language, she overturned the notion that bilingualism in French and Russian created a traumatized nobility searching for a national identity, arguing persuasively instead that private correspondence among noblewomen in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century revealed an "unproblematic cultural bilingualism." These works, together with a piece on Princess Dashkova and serfdom and a new book chapter on "Lonely Wives" at court and in the family [the latter appears in The Europeanized Elite in Russia, 1762-1825, ed. by Andreas Schönle, Andrei Zorin, and Alexei Evstratov (Northern Illinois University Press, 2016)], provide us all with a preview of a book that Michelle was planning to write on Princess Dashkova and the women at the Russian Imperial court during Catherine's reign. The consummate detective, Michelle worked in archival repositories in not only Moscow and St. Petersburg, but also Dublin, Edinburgh, London, and Paris. She delighted in the women's personal narratives and keen observations, the clothing and especially the jewelry they wore, and the roles that they carved out for themselves. If only she had been able to finish that book!

I myself did not know Michelle well, but I have very fond memories of the times I did get to know her somewhat. I met her at an ASEEES conference in the mid-1990s, when she was an eager and articulate senior graduate student at Northwestern University. Our paths did not cross in any substantial manner until the fall of 2004, when I conducted several weeks of research at RGADA in Moscow. I recognized Michelle in the reading room immediately, and we began to have lunch together fairly frequently and the occasional dinner. I was in awe of Michelle's ease in the reading room and her close friendships with the reading room staff. She introduced me to a very bright graduate student from Brandeis named Marlyn Miller, whom she was helping navigate the intricate rules of the Russian archives. I remember, too, the care with which Michelle took in preparing for a talk that she had to give to a Russian academic audience. Ever the perfectionist, Michelle practiced her speech for several days in advance, and as usual wowed her audience with her erudition, clarity of thought, and flawless presentation. In the late spring of 2006, I had planned to join Michelle in one of our favorite cities, Helsinki, for three weeks so that we could carry out our individual research and keep each other company in the evenings. Unfortunately, a bad back forced me to cancel my trip, a decision that I regretted having to make. In the past year, having learned of my husband's death, Michelle reached out to me several times to inquire about my state of being. She gave me comfort and sympathy, which I dearly appreciate. I will miss Michelle very much.

As a way to memorialize Michelle, I invite those who knew her to share a memory or two.

Svetlaia pamiat!

Christine Worobec