Steven Jug
Lecturer in History & Modern Languages and Cultures
Areas of Specialtization
Modern Russia, Southeastern Europe, East Central Europe, Military History, Masculinity and Gender History.
Education
Ph.D., University of Illinois
M.A., University of Toronto
B.A., University of Toronto
Academic Interests & Research Narrative
My research engages organized violence in Russia during the First and Second World Wars and in the Soviet martial art of Sambo. In the Imperial and especially Soviet Russian militaries, I examine the connection between changes in soldierly masculinities and prewar culture. My primary work studies soldiers’ gendered sense of self as central to changes in propaganda, combat motivation, unit cohesion, regime loyalty, and the perpetration of rape in the Red Army during the Second World War. The articles I have published draw from several methodological frameworks including sensory history, the history of emotions and embodiment, and historical subjectivity. My two upcoming articles examine the history of Sambo in Russia through the lenses of lived religion, mediatization, and masculinity as a site of contested nationalist authority among pro-Putin sub-state actors.
Selected Publications
““Forces spirituelles et physiques sans précédent. Réappropriation du sambo par l’Église orthodoxe en Russie” [“Unprecedented Spiritual and Physical Forces”: Reclaiming Sambo for Orthodoxy in Russia]” in Olivier Bernard, editor, L’univers social des arts martiaux [The social universe of martial arts], Presses de l'Université Laval, 2023.
“Reconnoitering Masculine Subjectivities among Soldiers & Officers on Russia’s Fronts, 1914-1917” in Melissa K. Stockdale and Adele Lindenmeyr, eds., Russian Women and Gender in War and Revolution, 1914-1922, Slavica Publishers, 2022.
“Mourning Deaths and Constructing Afterlives in the Red Army at War” in Candi K. Cann, ed., Death & Afterlife, Routledge, 2018, pp. 136-152.
“Sensing Danger: The Red Army during the Second World War” in Matthew P. Romaniello and Tricia Starks, eds., Russian History through the Senses: From 1700 to the Present, Bloomsbury Academic, 2016, pp. 219-240.
“Militarizing masculinities in Red Army discourse and subjectivity, 1942-1943” Masculinities: A Journal of Identity and Culture, Issue 3 (Feb 2015), pp. 189-212.
“Red Army Romance: preserving masculine hegemony in mixed gender combat units, 1943-1944.” Journal of War and Culture Studies, 5:3 (Sept 2012), pp. 321-334.
Courses Taught
- HIS 1300 | US in Global Perspective: Diplomacy and Empire
- HIS 1300 | US in Global Perspective: 20th C War and Gender
- HIS 2390 | Intro to Women’s and Gender History
- HIS 3340 | History of Russia to 1861
- HIS 3343 | History of Ukraine
- HIS 4337 | Europe from 1815 to 1914
Work with Students
- Accepting undergraduate research interns
- Willing to direct undergraduate theses and independent research