Dr. Mayhill C. Fowler comes to Toronto from the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, where she held a postdoctoral fellowship in spring 2012. She received her Ph.D in the Department of History at Princeton University in 2011. Her dissertation, “Beau Monde: State and Stage on Empire’s Edge, Russia and Soviet Ukraine, 1916-1941,” examined the structural revolution in the relationship between the arts, the state and society in the Soviet borderlands. Research interests include the dynamic between governance and innovation, how inter-ethnic encounters create frameworks for creativity, and cultural diplomacy. Publications include a chapter in Tkacz and Makaryk’s Modernism in Kyiv: Jubilant Experimentation, an article in Ab Imperio, and forthcoming articles in Canadian-American Slavonic Studies and Kritika. Dr. Fowler spent the fall of 2011 teaching at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, Ukraine, supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe. In addition, Fowler is a professional translator, and a former professional actress, with performance credits from California to New York. She received her MFA in acting from the National Theatre Conservatory, and her BA in Russian from Yale University.