Christine D. Worobec, Class of 1985

The Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) presented the 2017 Distinguished Contributions to Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Award to Christine D. Worobec who was at the Wilson Center as a Kennan Institute Research Grant Scholar in 1985. Her book Peasant Russia: Family and Community in the Post-Emancipation Period (Princeton University Press, 1991) is based on her research while she was in residence at the Center. 

The 2017 Distinguished Contributions to Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Award honors eminent members of the profession who have made major contributions to the field through scholarship of the highest quality, mentoring, leadership, and service to the profession. The award was presented to Christine D. Worobec, board of Trustees and Distinguished Research Professor Emerita at Northern Illinois University, for her tireless work mentoring scholars and in promoting Russian and Ukrainian women’s history, family history, and rural history.

She has written numerous path-breaking books and articles, especially her monographs Peasant Russia: Family and Community in the Post-Emancipation Period (Princeton University Press), which won the Association of Women in Slavic Studies (AWSS) Heldt Prize for the Best Book by a Woman in 1991, and Possessed: Women, Witches, and Demons in Imperial Russia (Northern Illinois University Press), which won the Heldt Prize for the Best Book in Women’s Studies a decade later.  Worobec has also collaborated on significant reference works and essay collections. Currently, she is working on mapping and analyzing Orthodox pilgrimages in modern Ukraine and Russia.

Apart from her contributions to the historiography of this less-commonly explored topic, Dr.  Worobec has generously served her profession. As a member of the AAASS/ASEEES since 1985, she served on its Board of Directors and chaired various committees. Worobec has also advanced the position of women and women’s studies in academe as a long-time leader of the AWSS. She has served on the editorial boards of several journals and refereed seventeen additional journals. Worobec has advised countless organizations and administrative committees. Fabled for her intellectual generosity and personal warmth, she has devoted a significant part of her career to advancing the status of women in the field, both in the US and abroad.

Dr. Worobec, who earned her BA, MA, and PhD degrees in History from the University of Toronto, has also garnered numerous accolades, among them grants from the Aleksanteri Institute at the University of Helsinki, the Institute for Advanced Studies (Paris), the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Read more about the award presentations from ASEEES here.