Professor Attended Spring Conferences

Dr. Russell Martin, Westminster College associate professor of history, attended three conferences this spring.

He presented "Worthy Because the Tsar Adores You: Muscovite Bride Shows and The Comedy of Artaxerxes" at the Midwest Slavic Conference at The Ohio State University April 17-19. The paper examined The Comedy of Artaxerxes, the first secular play performed in Russia, for insights into Muscovite marriage politics.

Martin was one of three U.S. participants at the international, invitation-only Religion and Integration in Early Modern Russia conference in Kiel, Germany, May 1-4.

"I was enormously privileged to be a part of this important gathering," Martin said. "I presented a paper, 'Gifts and Commemoration: Donations to Monasteries, Dynastic Legitimacy, and Remembering the Royal Dead in Muscovy (7159/1651).' Papers from this conference will be published early next year in a German journal, Forschungen."

Martin attended a symposium in honor of retiring professor Daniel Rowland May 15-18 at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. The symposium included many of Rowland's colleagues, who contributed articles on themes developed by Rowland. Martin presented "Muscovite Esther: Bride Shows, Queenship, and Power in The Comedy of Artaxerxes."

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

Martin appeared on A&E Biography in a broadcast on Ivan the Terrible as an expert on the controversial ruler. 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.

Contact Martin at (724) 946-6254 or e-mail martinre@westminster.edu for additional information. 

Dr. Russell Martin