Beth Holmgren is an American literary critic and a cultural historian in Polish and Russian studies. She is Professor and Chair of the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies at Duke University. Recognised for her scholarship in Russian women's studies and Polish cultural history, she is as of 2018 working on a multicultural history of fin-de-siecle Warsaw. Before coming to Duke, she taught at the University of California-San Diego and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She earned her B.A at Grinnell College, and two master's degrees and and her doctoral doctorate at Harvard University. Holmgren served as the president of ASEEES, the largest North American organization in Slavic Studies, and president of the AWSS, the Association for Women in Slavic Studies. During her tenure at ASEEES, she wrote and produced, in collaboration with director Igor' Sopronenko, the film Modern Russian Feminism: Twenty Years Forward, which was first screened at the convention and then issued as a DVD. In addition to publishing extensively in major Russian and Slavic journals, she has published in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Theatre Journal, Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, Journal of Jewish Identities, the Russian-language journal Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, and the Polish-language journals Teksty drugie, Pamiętnik teatralny, and Pamiętnik literacki.
Awards and Honors
1984-5: Fulbright-IREX dissertation fellowship
1986: JCEE/ACLS Dissertation Fellowship
1994: Association for Women in Slavic Studies best article
Women's Works In Stalin's Time: On Lidiia Chukovskaia and Nadezhda Mandrelstam.Indiana University Press, 1993.
Edited Books
Transgressive Women in Modern Russian and Eastern European Cultures: From the Bad to the Blasphemous, Co-edited with Yana Hashamova and Mark Lipovetsky. Routledge, 2016.
Americans Experience Russia: Encountering the Enigma, 1917-Present. Co-edited with Choi Chatterjee. Routledge, 2013.
Poles Apart: Women in Modern Polish Culture. Co-edited with Helena Goscilo, Slavica Press, 2006.
Russia.*Women*Culture. Co-edited with Helena Goscilo. Indiana University Press. 1996.
Translation
Keys to Happiness by Anastasya Verbitskaya. Edited, abridged, translated and introduced by Beth Holmgren and Helena Goscilo. Indiana University Press, 1999.
DVD
Modern Russian Feminism: Twenty Years Forward'. Written and produced by Beth Holmgren. Directed by Igor’ Sopronenko. Indiana University Press, 2009. Format:''' Multiple Formats, Dolby, NTSC.
