Jeff Sahadeo

Research Interests Related to European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies

Russian, East European, and Eurasian history; Empire and imperialism in Russia and Central Asia; diaspora and migration; contemporary Central Asia and the Caucasus; nationalism and minorities; comparative colonialisms.

Current Research Projects

• Rivers and Societies in Tsarist and Soviet Georgia (funded by a SSHRC Insight Development Grant)
• Director of Migration Research Laboratory, South Ural State University, Chelyabinsk, Russia
• The Impact of History and Memory on Ethnic Relations in Kyrgyzstan (in conjunction with the Global Centre for Pluralism)
• The Multinational Soviet City: Caucasus and Central Asian Migration to Leningrad and Moscow, 1945-1991 (funded by a SSHRC standard research grant)

Areas of Current Teaching

• EURR 5001 Interdisciplinary Seminar in European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies
• EURR 5010 Research Design and Methodology in European, Russian and Eurasian Studies
• EURR 4305/5305 and HIST 4607: Imperial Russia and the Russian Revolution
• EURR 4306/5306 and HIST 4608: Culture and Power in the Soviet Union
• PSCI 4503:  Politics of Central Eurasia
• PSCI 4504: Politics of the Caucasus and the Caspian Basin
• PSCI 3105: Imperialism
• EURR 5202: Nazism and Stalinism (co-taught with Professor James Casteel)

Selected Publications Relating to European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies

BOOKS

• Voices from the Soviet Edge: Southern Migrants in Leningrad and Moscow (in press, Cornell University Press; publication Spring 2019)
• Russian Colonial Society in Tashkent, 1865-1923  (Indiana University Press, 2007). 
• Everyday Life in Central Asia, Past and Present (co-editor, with Russell Zanca), (Indiana University Press, 2007).

SELECTED ARTICLES

• “Introduction: Forum: Oral History and Memory in Soviet Central Asia” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 20, no, 2 (2019): 227-36.
• “Black Snouts Go Home! Migration and Race in Late Soviet Leningrad and Moscow,” Journal of Modern History 88, no.4 (2016): 797-826.
• “We’re Exceptional Too!: Power, Peripheries and Imperial Connections. Julian Go’s Patterns of Empire Viewed from the Russian Borderlands” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 34, no. 3 (2014): 630-6.
• “Soviet Blacks and Place Making in Leningrad and Moscow” Slavic Review, 71, no. 2 (Summer 2012): 331-358.
• “The Accidental Traders:  Marginalization and Opportunity from the Southern Republics to Late Soviet Moscow” Central Asian Survey 30, nos. 3-4 (2011): 521-540 (republished in Movement, Power and Place in Central Asia: Contested Trajectories (London: Routledge, 2012).
• “Visions of Empire:  Russia’s Place in an Imperial World” Kritika:  Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 11, no. 2 (Spring 2010): 381-409.
• “Epidemic and Empire:  Ethnicity, Class, and ‘Civilization’ in the 1892 Tashkent Cholera Riot”  Slavic Review 64, no. 1 (Spring 2005): 117-139.
• “Empire of Memories:  Conquest and Civilization in Imperial Russian Tashkent” Canadian Slavonic Papers XLVI no. 1-2 (March-June 2004): 395-417.

SELECTED CHAPTERS IN EDITED BOOKS

• “Springtime for Central Asia? Belts and Roads, Partnerships and Risks Amid Global Realignment” In The New World Disorder: Challenges and Threats in an Uncertain World ed. J.L. Black, Michael Johns and Alanda D. Theriault (London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2019).
• “History, Memory and the Quest for Conflict Resolution in Southern Kyrgyzstan and the Ferghana Valley” In Interrogating Liberal Peace in Eurasia: Critical Perspectives on Peace and Conflict. Ed. Catherine Owen, Shairbek Juraev and Nicholas Megoran (London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2018), 25-54.
• “Russia and Central Asia: Does the Tail Wag the Dog?” In Russia after 2012: From Putin to Medvedev to Putin.  Continuity, Change, or Revolution, ed. J. Larry Black and Michael Johns (Routledge, 2013), 167-183.
• “Regional Histories, Critical Thought, and the University of Central Asia:  Between Global and Local, North and South” Globalization on the Margins: Education and Postsocialist Reform in Central Asia ed. Iveta Silova (Information Age Publishing, 2011), 95-116.
• “Without the Past There is No Future:  Archives, Authority, and History in Uzbekistan” in Archive Stories:  Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History ed. Antoinette Burton (Duke University Press, 2005), 44-67.

RECENT SCHOLARLY PRESENTATIONS 

• Making Caucasians Black: Racism and Street Trade on the Streets of Soviet Moscow” McGill University, University of Toronto and Queens University, January 2020.
• “From Southern Farms to Northern Tables, Soviet Style” Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies Annual Convention, November 2019, San Francisco, CA.
• “White Water to White Coal: the Mtkvari River in Late Imperial and Early Soviet Tbilisi” Free University of Tbilisi, Georgia, May 2019.
• “Crumbling from the Outside In: Perestroika-Era Migration to the Soviet Core” University of Basel, Switzerland, 12 September 2018.
• “The Kura River: Power, Image and Culture in the South Caucasus” Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies Annual Convention, November 2017, Chicago IL
• “Soviet Moscow as a Global City: Migration and Postcolonialism” South Ural State University, Chelyabinsk, Russia, April 2017.
• Speaker, Workshop for the Commission on the Development of Historical Science under the Apparatus of the President of the Kyrgyz Republic, December 2016.

PUBLIC SERVICE

• Committee Member, Reginald Zelnik Prize for Best Book in History, Association of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies, 2018-9
• CBC Morning on Expulsion of Russian Diplomats, 26 March 2018
• South Ural State Television, Migration in the Soviet Union and Russia, April 2017
• CTV appearances on Euro-Atlantic Relations 17 February and 24 April 2016
• ABC News on John Kerry trip to Central Asia, 2 November 2015
• CFRA radio on Syria and Russia, 15 October and 24 November 2015
• Media Appearances on Crisis in Ukraine, 2013-4:
• The National, 22 April 2014
• CTV Powerplay 22 April 2014
• Globe and Mail article on Moldova and Ukraine, 20 March 2014
• EURUS Blog on Crisis on Ukraine, Entries March-April 2014
• Hays Advantage, Bloomberg News, 15 March 2014
• CFRA Radio, 24 and 27 February, 4 and 25 March, 2 September 2014
• The Agenda, TVO, 24 February 2014
• CTV Newsnet, 5 August and 1 September 2014