Communications

Professor

College of Arts & Humanities - History

Bio

Since coming to West Chester in 1996, Dr. Lisa Kirschenbaum has developed classes in Soviet and Russian history as well as thematic courses that transcend national boundaries.

Kirschenbaum's research explores how people come to represent and understand their life stories as part of history, focusing on the linkages between individual, private lives and the momentous, often traumatic events of Russia's twentieth century. She has published three books: Small Comrades: Revolutionizing Childhood in Soviet Russia, 1917-1932 (RoutledgeFalmer, 2000); The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941-1995: Myth, Memories, and Monuments (Cambridge University Press, 2006); and International Communism and the Spanish Civil War: Solidarity and Suspicion (Cambridge University Press 2015).

Her current research focuses on cultural relations between the US and Soviet Union in the 1930s. Her book International Communism and the Spanish Civil War won the 2016 Heldt Prize from the Association for Women in Slavic Studies.

Kirschenbaum's research has been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, the International Research and Exchanges Board, and the Penn Humanities Forum. In 2009, Kirschenbaum was awarded the West Chester University Trustees' Achievement Award.

Education

• Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley

Media

Pass Blue, 2022
Washington Post, 2022
15 Minute History, 2018
SRB Podcast, 2017
History Channel, 2001