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Department ofHistory

Amy E. Randall


Education

Ph.D., History, Princeton University
M.A., History, Princeton University
B.A. magna cum laude Russian and Soviet Studies, Wesleyan University

Amy Randall is a historian and gender studies scholar. She earned her BA from Wesleyan University and her MA and PhD in History from Princeton University. She has published a monograph and many articles and essays on the Soviet Union, including "socialist" retail trade and consumer culture in the Stalinist 1930s, gender and sexuality during the Stalin era, and more recently, reproductive politics and Soviet masculinities in the post-Stalin era. She is also the editor of and contributing author to the volume: Genocide and Genocide in the Twentieth Century: A Comparative Survey, which was recently republished and expanded in a 2nd edition. Currently Professor Randall is Chair of the History Department, Professor of History and Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies (by courtesy appointment), and Associate Chair of the Center for Arts and Humanities. Several of her courses are cross listed with WGST, and all of her courses utilize gender as a category of historical analysis.

 

Courses
  • HIS 11A and 12A: Identity and the "Other" in the Making of the Modern World
  • HIST 102S: Genocide and Gender in the Twentieth Century
  • HIST 122: The Holocaust
  • HIST 133/ WGST 137: The History of Sexuality
  • HIST 134: Reformers & Revolutionaries in Tsarist Russia
  • HIST 136/ WGST 172: Gender and National Identity in 20th-Century Eastern and Western Europe
  • HIST 137: The Soviet Experiment

 

Select Awards
  • Dean’s Service Award, September 2023
    • Awarded in recognition of work performed as member of Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Council for the Dean’s Office
  • SCU Sisterhood is Powerful Award, June 2018
    • Awarded in recognition of contributions to the WGST Department and the status of women at SCU
  • Phi Beta Kappa Northern California Teaching Excellence Award, Spring 2012

 

Publications
Monographs and Edited Collections
  • Editor, Genocide and Genocide in the Twentieth Century: A Comparative Survey, 2nd edition (Bloomsbury Publishers, 2022).

  • Editor, Genocide and Gender in the Twentieth Century: A Comparative Survey (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015).
    • Selected as one of Choice Magazine’s Outstanding Academic Titles of the Year, 2016

  • Guest Editor of "Soviet Masculinities," a special issue of Russian Studies in History: A Journal of Translations (published by M.S. Sharpe), 51:2 (Fall 2012).

  • The Soviet Dream World of Retail Trade and Consumption in the 1930s (Basingstoke, UK and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, October/November 2008).
Articles/Chapters/Essays
  • “Writing Stalinist History in Cold War Breezes,” co-written with Kate Brown, in Essays in Honor of Lynne Viola, ed. Dan Healey, Tracy MacDonald, and Heather DeHaan (University of Toronto Press, forthcoming).

  • “Introduction: Gender and Genocide Studies” in Genocide and Gender in the Twentieth Century: A Comparative Survey 2nd edition, ed. Amy E. Randall (Bloomsbury Academic Publishers, 2022).

  • Ch 1, “Imperialism, Race Thinking, Gender, and Genocide,” in Genocide and Gender in the Twentieth Century: A Comparative Survey, 2nd edition, ed. Amy E. Randall (Bloomsbury Academic Publishers, 2022).

  • “The Source -- For the Father of a Newborn: Soviet Obstetrics and the Mobilization of Men as Medical Allies,” Aspasia vol. 15 (2021): 146-164.

  • Soviet and Russian Masculinities: Rethinking Soviet Fatherhood after Stalin and Renewing Virility in the Russian Nation under Putin,” Journal of Modern History 92:4 (2020): 859-898.

  • Gender and Sexuality,” in Life in Stalin's Soviet Union, ed. Ed. Kees Boterbloem (Bloomsbury Academic Publishers, 2019): 139-166.

  • “Gender and the Emergence of the Soviet “Citizen-Consumer” in Comparative Perspective,” in Material Culture in Russia and the USSR: Things, Values, Identities, ed. Graham Roberts (Bloomsbury Academic Publishers, 2017), 135-153.

  • "Introduction: Gendering Genocide Studies" in Genocide and Gender in the Twentieth Century: A Comparative Perspective, ed. Amy E. Randall (Bloomsbury Publishers, 2015). 1-34.

  • "Soviet Masculinities: Guest Editor's Introduction," RSH 51:2 (Fall 2012): 3-12.

  • "The 'Right' to Control Her Own Body?: Soviet Women, Abortion and the State," and online 8-page essay for the Journal of Women's History (at editors' request) for the journal's new web initiative, "Beyond the Printed Page," September 2011.

  • “‘Abortion Will Deprive You of Happiness!’: Soviet Reproductive Politics in the Post-Stalin Era,” The Journal of Women’s History 23:3 (September 2011): 13-38.

  • “Repealing the Ban on Abortion,” an invited essay, plus primary document translations ("Repeal of the Ban on Abortion," "For you, Comrade Men") and selection of Soviet illustrations for Seventeen Moments in Soviet History, an award-winning online collection of primary source materials and academic writings on Soviet history edited by James von Geldern and Lewis Siegelbaum, Summer 2010.

  • "Legitimizing Soviet Trade: Gender and Feminization of the Retail Workforce in the Soviet 1930s," Journal of Social History 37:4 (Summer 2004): 965-990).

  • "Revolutionary Bolshevik Work' -- Stakhanovism in Retail Trade," The Russian Review 59:3 (July 2000): 425-441.
Book Reviews
  • Review of Barbara Alpern Engel, Marriage, Household, and Home in Modern Russia: From Peter the Great to Vladimir Putin (Bloomsbury History of Modern Russia Series, 2022) in Journal of Modern History, forthcoming.

  • Review of Claire McCallum, The Fate of the New Man: Representing and Reconstructing Masculinity in Soviet Visual Culture, 1945-1965 (DeKalb, 2018), in Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 1-2 (2022).

  • Review of Anton Weiss-Wendt, The Soviet Union and the Gutting of the UN Genocide Convention (Madison, 2017) in American Historical Review, 124:2 (2019): 632-634.

  • Review of Diane Koenker, Club Red: Vacation Travel and the Soviet Dream (Ithaca, 2013) in Business History Review, Vol. 89; Issue 3 (Sept 2015): 617-620.

  • Review of Kristin Roth-Ey’s Moscow Prime Time: How the Soviet Union Built the Media Empire That Lost the Cultural Cold War (Ithaca, 2011), in Business History Review, 86:4 (2012): 863-865.

  • Review of Mark B. Smith, Property of Communists: The Urban Housing Program from Stalin to Khrushchev (DeKalb, 2010), in Journal of Cold War Studies, 14:4 (2012): 260-263.

  • Review of Frances Lee Bernstein, The Dictatorship of Sex (DeKalb, 2007), in Journal of Cold War Studies, 12:4 (2010): 203-205.

  • Review of Nina Lugovskaya, I Want to Live: The Diary of a Young Girl in Stalin’s Russia (Houghton Mifflin, 2007), in Women East-West, 94 (Spring 2008).

  • Review of Julie Hessler, A Social History of Soviet Trade: Trade Policy, Retail Practices, and Consumption, 1917-1953 (Princeton, 2004), in The Russian Review, 65:1 (2006): 144-6.

  • Review of David Hoffmann, ed., Stalinism: The Essential Readings (Malden, 2003), in Journal of Cold War Studies, 8:4 (2006): 172-75.

  • Review of Wendy Z. Goldman, Women at the Gates: Gender and Industry in Stalin’s Russia (Cambridge, UK, 2002), in The Russian Review, January (2003): 170-1.

  • Review of Lewis Siegelbaum and Andrei Sokolov, Stalinism as a Way of Life: A Narrative in Documents (New Haven, 2000), in Journal of Cold War Studies, 4:2 (2002): 129-31.

  • Review of Gennady Andreev-Khomiakov, Bitter Waters: Life and Work in Stalin's Russia (Boulder, 1997), in H-Net Reviews, May 1999.

  • Review of Elizabeth A. Wood, The Baba and the Comrade--Gender and Politics in Revolutionary Russia (Bloomington, 1997), in H-Net Reviews, April 1998.

 

Genocide and Gender in the Twentieth Century, second edition

Journal of Women's History

In the News

January 4, 2024

Amy E. Randall discusses how the current definition of genocide came into existence and why it is important to conceptualize genocide from a gendered lens, in a Conversations on Genocide podcast from Genocide Watch.

February 2022

Amy E. Randall was quoted in an article about Putin's rationale for invading Ukraine.