Join us for a presentation from former Boston College history professor Cynthia Simmons as she provides historical context for the current war in Ukraine. Kyiv/Kiev is the seat of Kievan Rus’, and Eastern Orthodoxy, predating Russia as a state; “Little Russia” was the term for Ukraine during the Russian Empire. Simmons will talk about the Soviet period, as well as how the current war between Russia and Ukraine has more in common with the war of 1942 or 1982 than with the post-Soviet era. In the context of these periods, she will discuss language, religion, and other aspects of culture related to identity.
Dr. Cynthia Simmons is a Professor Emerita at Boston College, where she taught in the Department of Slavic and Eastern Languages and Literatures from 1994-2017. Dr. Simmons received her PhD in Slavic Languages from Brown University with a dissertation titled “Cohesion in Russian: The Major Resource of Textual Unity." At Boston College, she was the director of the Eastern European Studies minor, the Chair of the Department of Slavic and Eastern Languages and Literatures from 2002-2005, the Director of Undergraduate Studies in 2006. She has written dozens of articles and translations in her field. Her book publications include Writing the Siege of Leningrad: Women’s Diaries, Memoirs, and Documentary Prose (2002) and Women Engaged/Engaged Art in Postwar Bosnia: Reconciliation, Recovery, and Civil Society (2010). Her research has focused on women in war, the Cold War, and Eastern European politics as related to the Soviet Union.
