Westminster Professor Part of American History Grants Program

Dr. Russell E. Martin, associate professor of history at Westminster College, spent time this summer deciding which schools received grant funds from the Department of Education's Teaching American History Grants Program.

"I, and a dozen other teachers and professional historians, spent a week reading proposals, and deciding which schools and programs got funded and which didn't" said Martin. "It was daunting work. So many of these schools demonstrated the need for grants. It made me feel that my work at Westminster teaching my students, who are secondary education minors and history majors, is really quite important."

Martin is one of the organizers of "Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow: His Life, Times and Legacy," an international conference scheduled Nov. 1-2 at Holy Trinity Orthodox Seminary in Jordanville, N.Y.

"The conference will have papers by prominent scholars in the fields of history and the history of religions, and will come from the United States, Germany, and Russia," said Martin. "This is the first academic gathering of its kind at Holy Trinity Seminary. We will examine the life and work of Philaret, one of Russia's leading churchmen of the 19th century who was recently canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church."

Martin has also been advised that his work, Death and Commemoration in Muscovy, will appear in the Russian Studies in History series published by the Stanford University Press.

"The volume contains contributions by Russian historians on topics ranging from death and kinship awareness, to theological teachings about death, to the rituals for the care for the dead and the care for the memories of those who have died," said Martin.

Martin appeared on A&E Biography in a broadcast on Ivan the Terrible as an expert on the controversial ruler, and has been an expert witness in a Canadian civil trial about the Russian royal family. He is the co-founder of the Muscovite Biographical Database, a Russian-American computerized register based in Moscow of early modern Russian notables. The Neville Island, Pa. Native is not only fluent in Russian, but also reads Old Church Slavonic/Russian, French, German, Latin, and Polish.

Martin, who has been with Westminster College since 1996, earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Pittsburgh, and his master's and Ph.D. from Harvard University.

For more information, contact Martin at (724) 946-7246 or e-mail martinre@westminster.edu.