Conversations from the Cullman Center, LIVE from NYPL, Online: Utopia's Discontents: Faith Hillis with Mike Duncan

Historian Faith Hillis examines the evolution of Russian émigré communities in Europe and their pivotal role in the Russian Revolution.

The 1917 Russian Revolution marked the dawn of a new day in Russian politics, but it also represented the continuation of decades-long conversations that began during emigration and were exported back to Russia. In Utopia’s Discontents, Faith Hillis explores how Russian émigré communities developed into revolutionary social experiments in the heart of bourgeois cities like London and Paris, and how their efforts to transform the world played crucial roles in socialism, liberalism, anarchism, and Zionism across borders.

Faith Hillis researched and wrote Utopia’s Discontents during her 2018–2019 Fellowship at the Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. She discusses her book with best-selling author and podcast host Mike Duncan.

Produced in partnership with The Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.

The program will be streamed live on this page. If you encounter any issues, please join us on NYPL's YouTube channel.

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• What You Did Not Tell: A Russian Past and the Journey Home, by Mark Mazower — NYPL Catalog; Bookshare
• The Anti-Imperial Metropolis: Interwar Paris and the Seeds of Third World Nationalism, by Michael Goebel — NYPL Catalog ; Bookshare
• The Life and Soul of a Legendary Jewish Socialist, by Vladimir Medem  — NYPL Catalog
• A Fire in their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York, by Tony Michels — NYPL Catalog; Bookshare

Faith Hillis is Associate Professor of Russian History at the University of Chicago and the author of Children of Rus’: Right-Bank Ukraine and the Invention of a Russian Nation. She has held fellowships at Columbia University and Harvard University, and her research has been funded by the American Council of Learned Societies, Fulbright-Hays, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, among others.

Mike Duncan is one of the most popular history podcasters in the world and author of the New York Times-bestselling book, The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic. His award-winning series, The History of Rome, remains a legendary landmark in the history of podcasting. Duncan’s ongoing series, Revolutions, explores the great political revolutions that have driven the course of modern history. His most recent book is Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution.

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The Cullman Center is made possible by a generous endowment from Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman in honor of Brooke Russell Astor, with major support provided by Mrs. John L. Weinberg, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Estate of Charles J. Liebman, The von der Heyden Family Foundation, John and Constance Birkelund, and The Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, and with additional gifts from Helen and Roger Alcaly, The Rona Jaffe Foundation, The Arts and Letters Foundation Inc., William W. Karatz, Merilee and Roy Bostock, and Cullman Center Fellows.

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