Ilya Gerasimov holds Russian (1998) and American (2000) PhDs, and is a founder and the Executive Editor of the international quarterly Ab Imperio, a journal dedicated to the studies of new imperial history and nationalism in the post-Soviet space which is currently published under the sponsorship of the Havighurst Center and the College of Arts and Science at Miami University. Gerasimov has published in several languages on Russian social history, the history of criminality and new imperial history. His new book, Plebeian Modernity: Social Practices, Illegality, and the Urban Poor in Russia 1906-1916 (2018) tells the story of the “silent majority” of urban inhabitants in four imperial cities: Vilna (Vilnius), Odessa, Kazan, and Nizhny Novgorod, focusing on the social practices as the universal language binding the urban plebeian society together, substituting for the virtually absent sphere of discourses.
Sponsored by the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies
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