Julie D. Hemment
Professor of Anthropology
OFFICE HOURS:
By Appointment
I am anthropologist whose research interests include gender, youth and post-socialism, NGOs and global civil society, social welfare and citizenship, and feminist, participatory and collaborative methodologies. I have conducted ethnographic research in Russia since 1997, working collaboratively with Russian feminist scholars and activists in the provincial city Tver.’ My first book, Empowering Women in Russia: Aid, NGOs and Activism (Indiana University Press, 2007), examines nineties-era democratization projects from vantage point of the women’s group I worked with, tracing the contours of our project to set up a crisis center for survivors of gender-based violence. My most recent research – supported by the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, IREX, and the National Science Foundation – focused on the controversial nationalist youth projects that proliferated between 2005-2011, exploring both the forces that prompted them and the motivation of their participants. Most recently, I’ve sought to intervene in public discussions of Russia, offering a critical anthropological perspective on the Russian hacking scandal.
To the extent possible, I bring my collaborative research into the classroom. Since 2011, students of my Europe After the Wall class enter into dialogue with Russian peers, students of Tver’ State University. Our Skype conferences have been a highlight!
PUBLICATIONS
Books:
- Hemment, Julie. Youth politics in Putin's Russia: Producing patriots and entrepreneurs. Indiana University Press, 2015.
- Hemment, Julie. Empowering women in Russia: Activism, aid, and NGOs. Indiana University Press, 2007.
Articles:
- Hemment, Julie. "Red Scares and Orange Mobilizations: A Critical Anthropological Perspective on the Russian Hacking Scandal." Slavic Review76, no. S1 (2017): S66-S80.
- Hemment, Julie. "Nashi, youth voluntarism, and Potemkin NGOs: Making sense of civil society in post-Soviet Russia." Slavic Review 71, no. 2 (2012): 234-260.
- Hemment, Julie. "Redefining need, reconfiguring expectations: the rise of state-run youth voluntarism programs in Russia." Anthropological Quarterly85, no. 2 (2012): 519-554.
- Hemment, Julie. "Global civil society and the local costs of belonging: Defining violence against women in Russia." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 29, no. 3 (2004): 815-840.
COURSES RECENTLY TAUGHT
- Europe After the Wall (Anthro 394) —The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was a seismic event that took the world by storm. It gave rise to dizzy optimism and hope for a new, post-ideological age and greater global unity, within and beyond Europe. Almost thirty years later, it's clear these hopes have not been realized. Cold War hostilities are alive, the EU project is in jeopardy and US-Russia relations are at a concerning (and confusing) low point. This undergraduate seminar explores the implications of the Wall and its passing, focusing on anthropological accounts of the (former) East bloc and using anthropological knowledge to explore contemporary controversies. The course is divided into two main parts: 1) What Was Socialism? (Bolshevik visions, the cultural logics of state socialism) and 2) What Came Next? (the fall of the Wall, the dislocations of the nineties and the tumultuous politics of the post-socialist present). In the latter part of the course we move to consider some recent flash points of US-Russian relations: Gender, sexuality & LGBTQ rights; new populisms & xenophobias; “Russiagate” and the US election hacking scandal.
- The Anthropology of Postsocialism (Anthro 697PS)—The so-called "collapse of Communism" in the late 1980s paved the way for ambitious projects for social and political change; it also gave rise to a burgeoning scholarship that mapped the political and economic transformations these projects sought to effect. This graduate seminar explores both anthropology’s distinctive contributions to the study of postsocialism, and the anthropology of postsocialism’s contributions to the discipline of anthropology. Bringing together ethnographic and theoretical accounts of the former East bloc, the course examines some of the socio-political and cultural realignments of the postsocialist period and their implications for our thinking beyond the region. The course is structured around Katherine Verdery’s question, “What Was Socialism, And What Comes Next?” Themes to be discussed will likely include: gender, identity and citizenship; markets, moralities and stratification; civil society, democratization and NGOs; the new populisms, xenophobia and the crisis of liberalism; memory, nostalgia and the politics of history. We will explore these themes by reading some of the most exciting new ethnographies of the region, grounded accounts that explore the transformations in social and cultural logics, power relations and practices that accompanied political and economic change.