Alexander Martin

Alexander Martin teaches the history of imperial Russia and of Europe in the long 19th century.

 

His research focuses on Russia and its relationship with Europe from the Enlightenment to the mid-19th century. He has published three monographs. The first was an intellectual and political history: Romantics, Reformers, Reactionaries (1997), a study of Russian conservatism in the era of the Napoleonic Wars. His second was an urban history: Enlightened Metropolis (2013), which explores the transformation of Moscow into a modern city from the perspective of social, intellectual, and cultural history. His third, From the Holy Roman Empire to the Land of the Tsars (2022), was a microhistory that used the colorful figure of the barber-surgeon, actor, merchant, freemason, pastor, and writer J.A. Rosenstrauch to explore questions of empire, mobilities, colonization, memory, and self-fashioning in Germany and Russia in the Age of Revolution.

 

Martin is current working on an English translation of the autobiography of the Ukrainian nobleman Grigory Vinsky (1752-1818), which will be completed in 2025 and is under contract with Northern Illinois University Press. He has previously published two other book-length primary source editions: an English translation of the priest’s son Dmitrii Rostislavov’s account of life in provincial Russia in the early 19th century, and a bilingual (German and Russian) edition of J.A. Rosenstrauch’s memoir of Napoleon’s occupation of Moscow.