Stephen Norris will lead a conversation with Ivan Kurilla, a Russian-trained historian of US-Russian relations, and Willard Sunderland, a historian of imperial Russia at the University of Cincinnati, on the challenges of writing about Russian-American relations.
Ivan Kurilla is a historian of U.S.–Russia relations, national identity, and the political uses of history. He previously taught at Volgograd State University and the European University at St. Petersburg and has held appointments at Dartmouth College, George Washington University, Bowdoin College, Wellesley College, and Middlebury College. In 2024 he left Russia after being dismissed for opposing the war in Ukraine and is now based in the United States as a visiting scholar. Kurilla is the author or editor of numerous books, including Distant Friends and Intimate Enemies: A History of American–Russian Relations (with David Foglesong and Victoria Zhuravleva, Cambridge University Press, 2025 and Echoes of the American Civil War Abroad (co-edited with Victoria Zhuravleva, Bloomsbury, 2026).
Willard Sunderland is the Henry Winkler Professor of Modern History at the University of Cincinnati. He is the author of two books, including The Baron's Cloak: A History of the Russian Empire in War and Revolution. Sunderland's current book-in-progress is a travelogue/history of John Quincy Adams' voyage to Russia in 1809 as the first US ambassador appointed to the Russian court. Following John Quincy's route, Sunderland sailed in 2023 to the edge of Russia himself with his friends and fellow Cincinnatians Tom and Chuck Lohre in his sailboat Clio. John Quincy's trip from Boston to St. Petersburg took 80 days. Sunderland's from Boston to Kotka, Finland, located just shy of the Russian border, took 76. In addition, Sunderland is also working on a book focused on the history of Russia and the world in the age of Peter the Great as well as new research related to Russian maritime history, the history of the Russian Far East and Northern Pacific, and Sino-Russian relations.
