Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby

My research focuses on identity and folklore in contemporary Russia. My first book, Village Values: Negotiating Identity, Gender and Resistance in Urban Russian Life-Cycle Rituals, was the result of ten years of fieldwork on birth, wedding and funeral customs in Russian cities across the country. My goal was to demonstrate how traditional folk practices and beliefs interacted with both Soviet-era official, institutional policies as well as with non-native practices imported from the west. Of particular concern was how the rituals allowed people to negotiate their social, familial and gender identities through resistance and accommodation to the messages from these varied sources. My current research focuses on the religious revival in post-socialist Russia. I am working on a book tentatively titled Sacred Springs in the GULAG. Believers' interactions with these springs illustrate the complex strands of contemporary Siberian Russian identity. I am exploring the legacy of the USSR and attitudes toward the Soviet past, the role of the springs within the community of believers over time, and the memory of GULAG victims and their own parallel role as "victims" in the socialist past and post-socialist present.