Matthew Romaniello

Professor Romaniello received his B.A. in European History from Brown
University in 1995; M.A. in Russian History from Ohio State University in 1998; and Ph.D from Ohio State in 2003 with candidacy fields in Russia and Eastern Europe, Medieval Europe, and Gender and Sexuality. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at George Mason University and its Center for History and New Media from 2005 to 2007. His primary research interest concerns the Russian Empire’s relationship with Islam, both internally with its Muslim subjects and externally with its imperial rivals in Ottoman Turkey, Safavid Iran, and Mughal India.  He is currently working on a project focused on the consumption of tobacco in the Russian Empire as a means of uncovering Russia’s global connections and cultural exchanges.

Courses taught: 

Russian History (Tsarist, Modern, Russia in Asia and the Pacific) 454, 456, 457; Early Modern Europe (Renaissance and Reformation Europe, War and Violence) 339, 442; European Empires (East European, Colonialism) 351, 615D; World History, 152, 162, 296

Books:

2012    The Elusive Empire: Kazan and the Creation of Russia, 1552-1671, (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press)

2011   Contested Spaces of the Early Modern Nobility, edited with Charles Lipp, (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate)

2009    Tobacco in Russian History and Culture: From the Seventeenth Century to the Present, edited with Tricia Starks, (New York: Routledge); Paperback edition, 2011

Articles:

2012    “The Façade of Order: Claiming Imperial Space in Early Modern Russia” in Limits of Empire – Essays in Honor of Geoffrey Parker: European Imperial Formation in Early Modern World History, edited by Tonio Andrade and William Reger, (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate)

2012    “The Limits of Sovereignty: The Bashkirs and Early Modern Russian Imperialism” in Eurasian History: Contributions to the History, Culture, and Civilization, edited by Stoica Lascu, (Constanta, Romania: Ovidius University Press)

2009    “‘In friendship and love’: Russian Travels to Muslim Lands in the Early Modern Era,” Historical Yearbook of the Nicolae Iorga History Institute of the Romanian Academy, VI (2009): 111-122

2009   “Muscovy’s Extraordinary Ban on Tobacco” in Tobacco in Russian History and Culture: From the Seventeenth Century to the Present (New York: Routledge), 9-25

2007   “Through the Filter of Tobacco: The Limits of Global Trade in the Early Modern World,” Comparative Studies of Society and History, 49:4 (2007): 914-937

2007   “Mission Delayed: The Russian Orthodox Church after the Conquest of Kazan’,” Church History, 76:3 (2007): 511-540

2007  “Grant, Settle, Negotiate: Military Service in the Middle Volga Region,” in Peopling the Russian Periphery: Borderland Colonization in Eurasian History, edited by Nicholas Breyfogle, Abby Schrader, and Willard Sunderland, (New York: Routledge), 61-77

2006   “Ethnicity as Social Rank: Governance, Law, and Empire in Muscovite Russia,” Nationalities Papers, 33:4 (2006): 447-469

2004  “The Profit Motive: Regional Economic Development in Muscovy after the Conquest of Kazan’,” The Journal of European Economic History, 33:3 (2004): 663-685

2000   “Controlling the Frontier: Monasteries and Infrastructure in the Volga Region, 1552-1682,” Central Asian Survey, 19:3-4 (2000): 429-443