Simon Pawley

Email address: s.pawley@ucl.ac.uk

Working title of thesis: Russia's 'Nervous Age': Medicine, Modernity and Mass Culture, 1900-1930

Present degree status: PhD candidate

Start date of research: September 2008

Supervisors: Dr Susan Morrissey (primary), Dr Kristin Roth-Ey (secondary)

Centre to which the thesis is affiliated: Centre for Russian Studies

Description of research topic:
My thesis uses the example of nervous illnesses to examine the relationship between mass culture and ideas about the body, health and illness in Russia and the Soviet Union in the early 20th-century. In this period, industrialization, urbanization and mass-communication helped to change the essence of politics; a key aspect of this shift was the emergence of the politics of health ('biopolitics'). My thesis focuses on how these processes helped to shape individuals' efforts to cultivate their own health. In this way it tries to understand how biopolitics in revolutionary Russia related to the experiences of other modern Western countries.

This page last modified Friday 12 February 2010.