Tova Benjamin

I am a historian of modern Russia and European Jewry and Assistant Professor in the History and Russian Studies departments. My research interests include the Russian Empire’s economy in a global context, modern Jewish history, and the origins and emergence of ethnic violence in the East European borderlands. 

My current book project documents the growth of the Russian Empire’s Black Sea grain trade and the simultaneous emergence of anti-Jewish violence in fast commercializing regions of Southern Ukraine under Russian imperial rule. As part of my research, I reconstruct the everyday workings of the Russian empire’s grain trade in and around port cities, and the fraught interactions between traders and producers along commercial networks. I show how such commercial sites often erupted into rioting and ethnic attacks in an empire where ethnicity and economy tended to overlap. I explore popular and official reactions to the growth of a global commodity market in the late nineteenth century to understand new definitions of ethnicity and the political economy of the Russian empire’s final decades. 

I bring to my research and teaching a background in Comparative Literature and Yiddish Studies, and a fascination with global and comparative history. I am passionate about the mechanics of writing and historical methodology, and look forward to teaching and advising students from different majors or backgrounds who are interested in broader questions about Russian, Soviet, and Jewish history, as well as the history of ethnic violence, social and economic life under the Russian empire or Soviet socialism, and the makings of historical narratives. 

Before my arrival to Davidson, I was a long-time steward and organizer with my graduate student union, and am interested in all things labor history and the pitfalls and pleasures of social movements and student organizing. I love languages and the process of language study, and am available to guide students looking to explore Russian, Ukrainian or Yiddish-language summer programs in the US or abroad. 

I was born and raised in Chicago and remain loyal to the Midwest, but have grown to love many cities, including Toronto and New York.

Teaching

• HIS 124 Russia as a Multiethnic Empire 
• HIS 233 Soviet History and the Cold War 
• HIS 333 Jews in the Russian and Soviet Empires 
• HIS 431 Genocides in 20th Century Eurasia