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Podcast: New Books in Women's History
Episode: Katya Hokanson, "A Woman's Empire: Russian Women and Imperial Expansion in Asia" (U Toronto Press, 2023)
Description: A Woman's Empire: Russian Women and Imperial Expansion in Asia (U Toronto Press, 2023) explores a new dimension of Russian imperialism: women actively engaged in the process of late imperial expansion. The book investigates how women writers, travellers, and scientists who journeyed to and beyond Central Asia participated in Russia's "civilizing" and colonizing mission, utilizing newly found educational opportunities while navigating powerful discourses of femininity as well as male-dominated science.Katya Hokanson shows how these Russian women resisted domestic roles in a variety of ways. The women writers include a governor general's wife, a fiction writer who lived in...