Maxim Matusevich , Ph.D.
Professor and Department Chair
Department of History
(973) 761-9386
Email
Fahy Hall
Room 340
Maxim Matusevich, Ph.D.
Professor and Department Chair
Department of History
As the now defunct Soviet Union was teetering on the brink I decided to exchange the land of socialism for the land of opportunity. This highly successful transaction landed me in the state of Oklahoma, of which I had read in John Steinbeck's novels but never knew that it actually existed. It did. For the next 15 years I made a very slow but steady progress across the continent towards the beckoning lights of New York City. Since my arrival at Seton Hall University in 2005 I have been teaching courses in Global, African, and Cold War history. I also co-direct a study abroad program for Seton Hall students in the city of my birth - St. Petersburg, Russia. In my research and writing I focus on the history of cultural and political encounters between Africa and Russia/Soviet Union.
I am also the director of the Russian and East European Studies Program.
Education
- Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2001
- M.A., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1995
- B.A., University of Oklahoma, 1992.
Scholarship
Books
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Maxim Matusevich, ed., Africa in Russia, Russia in Africa: Three Centuries of Encounters, Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2007
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Maxim Matusevich, No Easy Row for a Russian Hoe: Ideology and Pragmatism in Nigerian-Soviet Relations, 1960-1991, Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2003
Recent Peer-Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters
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Maxim Matusevich, "A Black Journey of Red Hope," in David Featherstone and Christian Høgsbjerg, eds., The Red and the Black: The Russian Revolution and the Black Atlantic, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2021, pp. 273-282
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Maxim Matusevich, "Russian 'Alternative' in sub-Saharan Africa: A Challenge to Western Liberalism," in Aldo Ferrari and Eleonora Tafuro Ambrosetti, eds., Russia's Foreign Policy: The International-International Link, Milan: Ledizioni LediPublishing, 2021, pp. 114-141
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Maxim Matusevich, "Soviet Anti-racism and Its Discontents: The Cold War Years," in James Mark, Artemy M. Kalinovsky and Steffi Marung, eds., Alternative Globalizations: Eastern Europe and the Postcolonial World, Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2020
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Maxim Matusevich, "Zog Nit Keyn Mol: Paul Robeson's Tragic Love of Russia," in Felipe Espinoza Garrido, Caroline Koegler, Deborah Nyangulu, and Mark U. Stein, eds., Locating African European Studies: Interventions, Intersections, Conversations, London: Routledge, 2019, pp. 126-138
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Maxim Matusevich, "Russia in Africa: A Search for Continuity in a Post-Cold War Era," Insight Turkey, vol. 21, no. 1 (Winter 2019), pp. 25-39
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Maxim Matusevich, "Blackness the Color of Red: Negotiating Race at the US Legation in Riga, Latvia, 1922-33," Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 54, no. 4 (October 2017), pp. 832-852
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Maxim Matusevich, "Strange Bedfellows: An Unlikely Alliance Between the Soviet Union and Nigeria During the Biafran War," Postcolonial Conflict and the Question of Genocide: The Nigeria-Biafra War, 1967-1970 (Routledge, 2017), pp. 198-216
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Maxim Matusevich, "Expanding the Boundaries of the Black Atlantic: African Students as Soviet Moderns," Ab Imperio, no. 2 (Summer 2012), pp. 325-350
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Maxim Matusevich, "Testing the Limits of Soviet Internationalism: African Students in the USSR," in Philip Muehlenbeck, ed., Race, Ethnicity, and the Cold War: A Global Perspective, Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 2012, pp. 145-165
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Maxim Matusevich, "Expanding the Boundaries of the Black Atlantic beyond the Iron Curtain: African Students Encounter the Soviet Union," in Sabrina Brancato, ed., Afroeuropean Configurations: Readings and Projects, London: Cambridge Scholars, 2011, pp. 58-80
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Maxim Matusevich, "Harlem Globetrotters: African-American Travelers in Stalin’s Russia," in Jeffrey Ogbar, ed., The Harlem Renaissance Revisited: Politics, Art, Letters, Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010, pp. 211-244
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Maxim Matusevich, "’Race Travelers’ and Black America’s Romance with Soviet Russia," in Yu. P. Tretyakov and E. M. Apenko, eds., The Russian-American Links: African-Americans and Russia, St. Petersburg: Nauka, 2010, pp. 65-100
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Maxim Matusevich, "Probing the Limits of Internationalism: African Students Confront Soviet Ritual," Anthropology of East Europe Review, vol. 27, no. 2 (Fall 2009), pp. 19-39
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Maxim Matusevich, "Revisiting the Soviet Involvement in Sub-Saharan Africa," History Compass, vol. 9 (July 2009), pp. 1-10
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Maxim Matusevich, "Black in the USSR: Africans, African-Americans, and the Soviet Society," Transitions, no. 100 (February 2009), pp. 56-75
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Maxim Matusevich, "Journeys of Hope: African Diaspora and the Soviet Society," Journal of African Diaspora, vol. 1, no. 1-2 (2008), pp. 53-85
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Maxim Matusevich, "An Exotic Subversive: Africa, Africans, and the Soviet Everyday," Race and Class, vol. 49, no. 4 (April 2008), pp. 57-81
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Maxim Matusevich, "Reparation and Repair: Reform Movements in the Atlantic World," in Toyin Falola and Kevin Roberts, eds., The Atlantic World, 1450-2000, Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2008, pp. 338-358
Accomplishments
Research Fellowships and Grants
- Kennan Institute Short-term Research Fellowship, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC (2017)
- Writer-in-Residence, Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia, New York University, New York, New York (2017-18)
- University Research Council Summer Award, Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey (2016)
- Affiliated Research Fellow, W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts (2007-2010)
- Fulbright Grant (lecturing/research), Smolny Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia (2010)
- The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Institute, “America Engages Russia, Circa 1880-ca. 1930: Studies in Cultural Interaction”, The New York Public Library, New York City, NY (2009)
- IREX Research Grant, International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX), Washington, DC (2008-09)
- Provost’s Faculty Scholarship Award for the article in Race & Class, Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey (2008)
- Sheila Biddle Ford Foundation Fellowship, W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research , Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts (2007-08)
- Kennan Institute Short-term Research Fellowship, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC (2007)