Steve Smith

 Fields of Research

• The History of Modern Russia and China
• Comparative History of Communist Societies
• The Supernatural and Popular Culture
• Comparative Labour History
• Comparative Revolutions
• Social Identities
• Social Theory and History

 Languages

English, French, Italian, Russian

 Current Seminars at EUI 

• History and Social Sciences  (with Prof. H-G. Haupt) - Fall Term 2011/2012
• Thesis Writing Seminar  (with Prof. A. Romano) - Fall Term 2011/2012
• Training Seminar on Research Design and Research Skills in Early Modern History  (with Profs. P. Kolář and F. Romero) - Spring Term 2011/2012
• Music, Society and Politics in Europe: from Stockhausen to Lady Gaga  - Spring Term 2011/2012

 Current Research Projects

Prof. Smith is currently working on a book that compares the efforts of Communist regimes in the Soviet Union (1917-1941) and the People’s Republic of China (1949-1976) to eliminate  ‘superstition’ from daily life (in areas such as popular religion, calendrical and life-cycle rituals, agriculture and folk medicine) and the attempts by sections of the populace to resist or bypass those efforts through the invocation of  religious, folkloric or magical idioms and practices that conflicted with the official construction of social reality.

Prof. Smith is the editor, together with Lyndal Roper, of the journal, Past and Present .

 Selected Recent Publications

• Revolution and the People in Russia and China: A Comparative History  (Cambridge University Press, 2008)
• (Edited with Alan Knight) The Religion of Fools? Superstition Past and Present  (Oxford University Press, 2008)
• The Russian Revolution: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2002)
• Like Cattle and Horses: Nationalism and Labor in Shanghai, 1895-1927 (Duke University Press, 2002)