Professional Affiliation

PhD Recipient

Wilson Center Project

The Religious Life of Women in Muscovite Russia

Project Summary

Employs an interdisciplinary approach to previously unstudied materials in order to demonstrate how the Muscovite Church’s policy to integrate women into the Orthodox community resulted in the domestication of the traditional pagan female roles of the ritual celebration and lamenting and the creation of a lay model of female piety. Women from lower social strata resorted to forms of pious behavior which often circumvented the traditional church hierarchy to compensate for unmet spiritual needs.