Erin Hutchinson

Professor Hutchinson studies the cultural and political history of the Soviet Union, with a particular focus on the topics of nationality and empire.

Professor Hutchinson will be teaching courses on the history of the Soviet Union, the history of the Russian empire, and the modern Europe, including "Empire, Revolution & Global War: European History Since 1600."

Professor Hutchinson graduated with a B.A. from Arizona State University, an M.A. from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University.  Her book, Writing the Nation after Stalin: Literature and the Collapse of the Soviet Union (under contract with Oxford University Press), explores how intellectuals from rural origins influenced the development of nationalism in the Soviet Union after the death of Stalin. Her dissertation received the 2021 Harold K. Gross Prize from the Harvard History Department and was a finalist for the 2021 Cohen-Tucker Dissertation Prize awarded by the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES). In 2020-2021 she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard University Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. She received a Cohen-Tucker Dissertation Research Fellowship from ASEEES to conduct research for the project in Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, and Moldova. Her first article, “Ivan Denisovich on Trial: Soviet Writers, Russian Identity, and Solzhenitsyn’s Failed Bid for the 1964 Lenin Prize” appeared in the Winter 2021 issue of the journal Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. Her second article, “Gathering the Nation in the Village: Intellectuals and the Cultural Politics of Nationality in the Late Soviet Period” was published by The Russian Review in 2023. In 2024, it won the journal’s Levin Prize, which recognizes the best article that appeared in The Russian Review the previous year.

   Professor Hutchinson is accepting M.A. and PhD students. Potential applicants should have a strong background in the history of the former Soviet region and at least 3-4 years of Russian language study.