CEWS Profile: Nancy Ries

Nancy Ries obtained her Ph. D. in Anthropology from Cornell University in 1993. She is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Colgate University. Her research interests include study of social and cultural transformation in contemporary Russia; the anthropology of language, narrative, and identity; conflict and terror, weapons and war; and the comparative anthropology of post-socialism. Her many publications include "Everyday Comfort and Terror: Anthropology and Local Theory" in New Literary History (Fall 2002); "Honest Bandits' and 'Warped People': Russian Narratives about Money, Corruption, and Moral Decay" in Ethnography in Unstable Places (Duke University Press, 2002); "Russia," chapter in Encyclopedia of National Cultures (MacMillan, 2001); and a very well received book Russian Talk: Culture and Conversation during Perestroika, (Cornell University Press, 1997). Russian Talk received the Barbara Heldt Prize in 1997 for the Best Book by a Woman in Slavic and East European Studies. Since 2000, Ries has been the co-editor of a major series at Cornell University Press on “Culture and Society after Socialism.”