Nathaniel Knight , Ph.D.
Professor of History, Director of Russian and East European Studies Program
Department of History
(973) 275-2178
Email
Fahy Hall
Room 340
Nathaniel Knight, Ph.D.
Professor of History, Director of Russian and East European Studies Program
Department of History
I have been at Seton Hall teaching Russian and East European history, Western Civilization and Historical Methods since 1998. Before that I received my Ph.D. from Columbia University and lived in Russia for several years. In my research on nineteenth century Russia I have written, among other things, about scientific societies, folklore collectors, ethnographic exhibitions and expeditions, Orientalism, and Russian conceptions of nationhood. Forthcoming work includes studies of Russian scholarly biography, particularism in Russian science, Russian conceptions of race and a monograph on the history of Russian ethnography.
Education
- Ph.D., Columbia University, 1995
- M.A., Columbia University, 1989
- B.A., Oberlin College, 1984
Scholarship
- "Chto my imeem v vidu govoria o rase? Metodologicheskie razmyshleniia o teorii i praktike racy v Rossiiiskoi Imperii," [What Do We Mean When We Talk About Race? Methodological Reflections on the Theory and Practice of Race in Imperial Russia] Etnograficheskoe obozreniie, no. 2 (2019), 114-132.
- "Epilogue: Why Ethnos (Still) Matters" in Life Histories of Etnos Theory in Russia and Beyond, D. Anderson, D. Arziutov, S. Alymov, eds., Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2019.
- "Biography as Archive: Writing the Lives of Scholars in Imperial Russia." Slavonic and East European Review, v. 96, no. 1 (January 2018): pp. 16-40.
- "Geography, Race and the Malleability of Man: Karl von Baer and the Problem of Academic Particularism in the Russian Human Sciences." Centaurus: An International Journal of the History of Science and its Cultural Aspects, v. 59, no. 1-2 (Feb/May 2017): pp. 97-121.
- "The Abolition of Serfdom" in Dostoevsky in Context. O. Maiorova, D. Martinsen, eds. Cambridge University Press, January 2016. (Book Chapter)
- "Vocabularies of Difference: Ethnicity and Race in Late Imperial and Early Soviet Russia." Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, v, 13, no. 3 (Summer 2012): pp. 667-683.
- "Russian Ethnography and the Visual Arts in the 1840s and 1850s" in Visualizing Russia: Fedor Solntsev and Crafting a Russian National Past. Leiden and Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2010. (Book Chapter)
- "Seeking the Self in the Other: Ethnography of Non-Russian in the Russian Geographical Society, 1845-1860," in Shaping Identities: essays on emergent identities in Russia, seventeenth to nineteenth centuries (ed.) M. Branch. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2009. (Book Chapter)
- "Nikolai Kharuzin and the Quest for a Universal Human Science: Anthropological Evolutionism and the Russian Ethnographic Tradition, 1885-1900" Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 9:1 (Winter 2008)
- "Was the Intelligentsia Part of the Nation? Visions of Society in Post-Emancipation Russia" Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 6:4 (Fall 2006).
Accomplishments
- 2014 – History Department awarded status as a University Center of Excellence.
- 2008 – Seton Hall University, Faculty Innovation Grant
- 2005 – Seton Hall University Research Council Summer Research Stipend
- 2004 – Social Science Research Council, Teaching Fellowship
- 2001 – Seton Hall University Research Council, Faculty Stipend
- 1999 – National Council for East European and Eurasian Research, Research Grant
- 1998 – International Research Exchange Board, Short-term Travel Grant
- 1998 – Harriman Institute, Columbia University, Post-doctoral fellowship
- 1997 – Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Study, Research fellowship