Yelena Abdullayeva

My research project focuses on Azerbaijan that rests at the crossroads of both the Muslim and the Russian/Soviet worlds. I am interested in questions related to culture and cultural change, modernity, empire and colonialism. My work examines the history of Azerbaijan from the time of the Russian conquest in the 1800s to the 1939. I am concerned with the transformations of culture and identity as a result of that historical change. In particular, my study focuses on what I call a “synthesis” between Communist goals and the modernizing aspirations of pre-Soviet reformers in making a modern society. Along with this, I examine how the Imperial and Soviet authorities used gender peculiarities, education, and medicine to justify its control over the non-Russian population.

I received my Doctoral degree from the University of Waterloo, Canada (2020), for the thesis entitled Crafting the Modern Woman in Azerbaijan: Muslim Women, the State, and Modernity, 1900–1939. My study had been supported by grants from a number of institutions: the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Ontario Government (OGS), the University of Waterloo President’s Graduate Scholarships, and the Doctoral Thesis Completion Award, University of Waterloo. I enhanced my professionalism by obtaining the Certificate in Fundamentals of University Teaching and participating in the workshops organized by the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC) and Summer Research Laboratory (SRL) in Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (REEEC) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.