Steven Jug

Areas of Specialization

Modern Russia, East Central Europe, Ukraine, 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 masculinity studies, sensory history, the history of emotions and embodiment, martial arts studies, and historical subjectivity.

Selected Publications

Articles

“Military Women: Pursuing Equality, Defending Nations, and Threatening Masculinity”
Aspasia: The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European Women's and Gender History, 18:1 (June 2024).

“‘My Comrades Will Avenge me’: Feminine Heroic Death” in Florence Hervé, editor, Ihr wisst nicht, wo mein Mut endet: Europäische Frauen im Widerstand gegen Faschismus und Krieg [You don't know where my courage ends: European women in resistance against fascism and war], PapyRossa Verlag, 2024

““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.

Selected Activities

Fellowships

• Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society Teaching Fellowship, Baylor University, 2025
• Elizabeth Vardaman Award for Excellence in Mentoring Undergraduates, Baylor University, 2025
• Summer Faculty Teaching Institute Fellowship, Baylor University, 2024
• Active Learning Lab Fellowship, Baylor University, 2023-2024
• Legacies of Slavery Fellowship, Council of Independent Colleges, 2023

Regular Course Offerings

• Undergrad:
  • HIS 1300 | US in Global Perspective: Diplomacy, Empire, and Propaganda
  • HIS 1307 | World History since 1500
  • HIS 3337 | Nineteenth Century Europe
  • HIS 3340 | Russia to 1861
  • HIS 3343 | History of Ukraine
  • HIS 3345 | European Military History

Other Courses Taught

• Undergrad:
  • RUS 1301 | Elementary Russian
  • RUS 1302 | Elementary Russian II
  • AST 2380 | Peoples and Culture of Asia
  • SEES 2380 | Introduction to Slavic & East European Studies
  • WGS 2300 | Women and Gender: Introduction
  • SEES 3381 | History of East Central Europe

Work with Students

• Accepting undergraduate research interns
• Willing to direct undergraduate theses and independent research

Undergraduate Students: 

Luke Fine