Marsha Siefert

Marsha Siefert is a cultural and communication historian. One area of her research addresses how developments in communications technology have influenced the way in which cultural content has been organized, transmitted, packaged, and interpreted.  Recent publications include an analysis of twentieth-century European audiovisual policy and American culture (2007) and a history of telegraph communication in the Russian and Ottoman empires (2011). A second area is the historical dynamics of cultural evaluation, culture industries and their political dimensions, which she explored in the Soviet context in Mass Culture and Perestroika in the Soviet Union (1991), a joint project with Russian scholars that won a prize from the American Association of Publishers; more recently, she edited Extending the Borders of Russian History (2003).  She has co-edited book series with Longman Publishers and Oxford University Press, and is currently co-editor of Historical Studies in Eastern Europe and Eurasia for Central European University Press.