Abigail Holekamp

Mellon Assistant Professor of Russian Studies

Abby Holekamp completed her Ph.D. in Russian and East European History at Georgetown University in 2021. Her research focuses on transnational cultural histories of Russia/the Soviet Union and Western Europe. She is currently writing a book that explores the interplay of French and Russian revolutionary cultures from the 1870s-1930s. It reveals a relationship between the two traditions that was deeper, more popular, more creative, more cultural, more protracted, and ultimately more influential to a broader range of historical actors than has previously been elucidated by historians of either tradition. Her second book project will examine the transformation of the female "nihilist" from apocryphal Russian revolutionary figure into durable Russian revolutionary archetype in the European imagination. Her article "Who are Vera and Tatiana? The Female Russian Nihilist in the Fin de Siècle Imagination"-a close reading of a single case of invented identity and suspected terrorism in France in 1906-won a 2021 Heldt Prize from the Association for Women in Slavic Studies.