Betty Banks first encountered Russia as a very eager InTourist in 2003, and began studying Russian at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at the University of London three years later. She received her BA in Russian and History and MA in Russian Studies from SSEES; studied in Moscow, Kazan and Petrozavodsk; spent a summer in Central Asia and a year or so in the “real world” before deciding to head across the Atlantic to continue her education.
As a student in the history PhD program at NYU, Betty has a range of interests mostly clustered in cultural history and the post-war period of the Soviet Union, including the nature of Sovietness, race and ethnicity in the USSR, official culture and cultural politics, Soviet love stories, all of the Cold War and especially the relationship of the Soviet Union and the emerging Third World.
elizabethbanks@gmail.com
“The African Soviet Modern“. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East(special edition). May 2021 41(1). https://read.dukeupress.edu/cssaame/issue/41/1