{"id":355272,"date":"2018-12-14T14:58:29","date_gmt":"2018-12-14T19:58:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=355272"},"modified":"2019-04-04T16:57:27","modified_gmt":"2019-04-04T20:57:27","slug":"tanya-bakhmetyeva-awarded-prize-for-best-catholic-biography-355272","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/tanya-bakhmetyeva-awarded-prize-for-best-catholic-biography-355272\/","title":{"rendered":"Tanya Bakhmetyeva awarded prize for best Catholic biography"},"content":{"rendered":"
Tanya Bakhmetyeva, an associate professor on instruction in gender, sexuality, and women\u2019s studies, has received the 2018 Harry C. Koenig Book Prize<\/a> for best Catholic biography. Bakhmetyeva\u2019s winning book, Mother of the Church: Sophia Svechina, the Salon, and the Politics of Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Russia and France <\/em>(University of Northern Illinois Press, 2017), details the life of the Russian \u00e9migr\u00e9 and Catholic convert, whose Parisian salon became a social epicenter for the French intellectual elite.<\/p>\n \u201cThe research was connected to my own experience as a young woman living in post-Soviet Russia,\u201d explains Bakhmetyeva, who is also the associate academic director of the Ä¢¹½´«Ã½\u2019s Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Women\u2019s Studies.<\/a> \u201cI developed an interest in all things Catholic\u2013only to discover that there is a long and fascinating history of Russian Catholicism\u2013a complicated identity in a largely [Russian] Orthodox country.\u201d<\/p>\n Bakhmetyeva delves into Svechina\u2019s life as a noblewoman during a time with few occupational opportunities for women and within the context of liberal Catholicism, religious conversion, nationalism, and the role of the European salon.<\/p>\n \u201cThis prize was particularly gratifying to me,\u201d adds Bakhmetyeva, \u201cbecause I consider myself primarily a historian of women in Catholicism, so this prize recognizes both my work and the importance of the subject.\u201d<\/p>\n The Koenig Award, granted by the American Catholic Historical Association, is awarded to a monograph that focuses on the life of a Catholic personage of any age or time. The $1500 prize will be presented to Bakhmetyeva in January at the association\u2019s annual meeting.<\/p>\n