Jade McGlynn
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:
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Prelim Paper I (Russian Grammar)
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Prelim Paper IIA (Translation from Russian) and IIB (Russian Comprehension)
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Prelim Paper III (Literature I: Russian Poetry)
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Prelim Paper IV (Literature II: Prescribed Texts)
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FHS papers IIA and IIB (Translation from Modern Russian)
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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:
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Article: ‘Performing the Great Patriotic War through the Ukraine Crisis’ in Memory Studies. 2018. Online First https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698018800740
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Article: ‘United by History: Government appropriation of everyday nationalism during Vladimir Putin’s third term’ in Nationalities Papers. Volume 48, 2020 (forthcoming)
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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
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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):
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Review of Napred, u prošlost by Milan Subotić (in Serbian) in Ab Imperio 03/2020 (forthcoming)
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‘Cancelling VE Day?’ on the Centre for Geopolitics, University of Cambridge, website. May 2020. Available at: https://centreforgeopolitics.org/cancelling-ve-day/
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‘The Great Unifier? War Narratives and Military History Tours in Kalmykia’ in Peripheral Histories. June 2020. Available at: https://www.peripheralhistories.co.uk/post/the-great-unifier-war-narratives-and-military-history-tours-in-kalmykia
Funding, awards and fellowships (selected):
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Fully-funded CEELBAS DTP for DPhil research (AHRC)
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ASEEES grant
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Santander Fellowship
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MIIS Fellowship
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Marie Curie International Fellowship Research Grant
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Research Fellow at Voronezh State University
