Jade McGlynn

Jade McGlynn, M.A. (Oxon)
Lecturer in Russian

jade.mcglynn@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk

Research

I recently completed my DPhil, where I examined political uses of history in Russia during Vladimir Putin’s third term (2012-2018). Arguing that domestic politicians and state-aligned media continuously invoked history as a means of political legitimation and discursive (re)construction of Russian identity, I separated my research into two parts: 1) How did the Russian media and government conflate specific contemporary issues with historical events?; 2) How did they use this conflation to promote selective engagement with history as central to Russian identity? I answered these questions through a large-scale discourse analysis of Russian media sources and official government documents, as well as interviews with cultural practitioners. I first examined the government and media’s use of historical framing (the detailed conflation of a current event with a historical precedent) in their depictions of the Ukraine Crisis, sanctions, and Russian intervention in Syria. I then used these case studies to provide a framework of historical framing that can be applied beyond the Russian context. Historical framing was also part of a larger government-led ‘call to history’, whereby politicians and the media centred Russian identity around history and ‘correct’ historical interpretation. I provided practical examples in the second part of my thesis, when I detailed how the Ministry of Culture and Russian Military Historical Society promoted and funded hundreds of thousands of historical organisations, activities, and festivals to propagate a standard cultural historical narrative. Through the enormous scale of these efforts, the government also reinforced its narrative that Russians were experiencing a patriotic upsurge and had attained a heightened consciousness of their own history and cultural heritage (which I term cultural consciousness). In the conclusion, I argued that these processes and narratives are not unique to Russia and that my findings provide a template for exploring similarly politicised treatments of history and identity in other countries. 

While I work on turning this thesis into a monograph, I am also preparing a new postdoctoral research project examining Russia’s construction of memory alliances with target audiences in Serbia and Britain. In addition, I am currently working as a research assistant (under the supervision of Dr Polly Jones) exploring digital archival material relating to the ‘101st km’ towns in which many Gulag returnees settled. 

Teaching

I have taught Russian at University College since 2018, including the following papers: 

  • Prelim Paper I (Russian Grammar) 

  • Prelim Paper IIA (Translation from Russian) and IIB (Russian Comprehension)

  • Prelim Paper III (Literature I: Russian Poetry)

  • Prelim Paper IV (Literature II: Prescribed Texts)

  • FHS papers IIA and IIB (Translation from Modern Russian) 

  • Paper XI (Prescribed Authors)

I am also a Tutor in the Humanities on the Opportunity Oxford Humanities Bridging Programme 2020  and I have taught numerous access and outreach seminars on the Russian language and textual/literature analysis for various Oxford colleges and the MML faculty.

Publications

Peer-reviewed:

  • Article: ‘Performing the Great Patriotic War through the Ukraine Crisis’ in Memory Studies. 2018. Online First https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698018800740

  • Article: ‘United by History: Government appropriation of everyday nationalism during Vladimir Putin’s third term’ in Nationalities Papers. Volume 48, 2020 (forthcoming)

  • Edited volume: Rethinking Period Boundaries: Hidden Continuities and Discontinuities in European History and Culture (co-author with Lucian George). Berlin: De Gruyter. Contracted, forthcoming Autumn 2020

  • Book chapter: Periodisation: An Introduction (co-author with Lucian George). In Rethinking Period Boundaries: Hidden Continuities and Discontinuities in European History and Culture. Berlin: De Gruyter. Contracted, forthcoming Autumn 2020.

Other publications (selected):

Funding, awards and fellowships (selected):

  • Fully-funded CEELBAS DTP for DPhil research (AHRC)

  • ASEEES grant

  • Santander Fellowship

  • MIIS Fellowship

  • Marie Curie International Fellowship Research Grant 

  • Research Fellow at Voronezh State University

 

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