Coggeshall, Samuel

Sam Coggeshall is a historian of Modern Europe specializing in the history of late imperial Russia and the Soviet Union. His research examines the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union in international and inter-imperial context, focusing on the interaction between the Soviet state and the British Empire during the Russian Civil War and in the interwar period. His current book project, based on the dissertation “Revolutionary Frontiers: British and Soviet Missions and the Making of National Borders in the Russian Civil War,” shows how the work of local Soviet and British officials created new borders and made new national territories in the lands of the former Russian Empire during the upheavals of the Russian Civil War, shaping the postwar international order and the category of the nation state.

In addition to his focus on Soviet international history and the Russian Civil War, his other research interests include the history of nationalism, the role of gender in the construction of imperial subjecthood and inter-imperial relations, the history of avant-garde movements, Soviet cultural politics, the political and cultural dynamics of Stalinism, and the effects of the Second World War.

Dr. Coggeshall teaches the seminars “Making Borders: Surveys, Space, and Knowledge” and “Nations and Nationalisms,” and has served as a Teaching Fellow in lecture courses on Early Modern Europe, Modern Europe, and 20th Century Europe. He also supervises students writing senior thesis projects in the History Department’s Senior Honors Thesis seminar.