2023-24 Postdoctoral Fellow
About
Alexander McConnell is a historian of modern Russia and the Soviet Union. His research centers on the intersection of political language, cultural production, and moral values during the post-Stalin period (1953-1991). His current project traces the evolution of “humanism” in Soviet cultural, ideological, and philosophical discourse, examining how contests over the scope and meaning of this key concept reshaped ideals of socialist personhood. McConnell’s research has previously been supported by grants from the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), American Councils for International Education, the Donia Human Rights Center, and the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia.
As a postdoctoral fellow, McConnell will begin developing his doctoral dissertation into a book manuscript; complete revisions on an article draft for publication in Slavic Review; and draft a new article exploring different Soviet discourses and experiences of loneliness, a widespread but implicitly forbidden emotion under late socialism.
