Professor Edgar is not accepting new PhD applications for the 2026-2027 academic year.

My area of interest is the history of the Soviet Union, especially the history of Central Asia in the Soviet period.  My research has focused on the making of nations in early Soviet Central Asia and on nationality, race, and intermarriage in the postwar USSR.

  • Russian and Soviet history
  • Modern Central Asia
  • Borderlands, empires, and nations
  • Race and ethnicity
  • Genealogy and family history
  • Women and gender
  • Oral history

 

Oxford Handbook of the History of Race in Eurasia (co-editor)

Benjamin Franklin’s Descendants and the American Romance with Genealogy

 

 

 

 Books

Intermarriage and the Friendship of Peoples:  Ethnic Mixing in Soviet Central Asia.  (Ithaca:  Cornell University Press, 2022). Winner, 2023 AWSS Heldt Prize, co-winner, 2023 ASN Joseph Rothschild Prize; co-winner, CESS Book Prize in History and Humanities; named one of Foreign Affairs‘ best books of 2023.  Russian translation published 2025.

Intermarriage from Central Europe to Central Asia:  Mixed Families in the Age of Extremes, co-edited with Benjamin Frommer (Lincoln:  University of Nebraska Press, 2020).

Tribal Nation: The Making of Soviet Turkmenistan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004; paperback edition 2007).

Selected recent articles and chapters

“Gender and Nation after Socialism: Mixed Marriages in Kazakhstan,” with Saule Ualiyeva et al., Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (forthcoming 2027).

“Living with Ethnic Diversity under Communism,” in Melissa Feinberg and Lisa Kirschenbaum, eds., The Routledge History of Communism (New York: Routledge, forthcoming 2026)

“Oral History and the Collectivization Generation,” in Journal of Central Asian History 5, 2026, pp. 130-139.

“Scholarship and Shattered Illusions,” ASEEES Newsnet, vol. 66, no 1 (January 2026),  pp. 3-7.

“Central Asia: Ever More Central?,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History  26, 1 (Winter 2025), 177-88.

 

  • History 4C, Western Civilization, 1715-present
  • 123C  History of Europe, 1945-present
  • 135B History of Russia, 1800-1917
  • 135C History of the Soviet Union, 1917-1991
  •  201C Advanced Historical Literature (Comparative)
  •  135R Research Seminar in Russian History
  • 183DR  Readings in Central Asian History
  • 200E Historical Literature (20th Century Europe)
  • 223A/B  Research Seminar in Modern European History
  • 209A  The Academic Profession of History
  • President, Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (2025)
  • Member of editorial board, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History (2021- )
  • Member, Board of Directors, Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (2016-2019, 2024-26).
  • Member of editorial board, Central Asian Studies (London) 2014-present.
  • Member of editorial board, Forschungen zur Osteuropaeischen Geschichte, Harrassowitz Verlag, Germany (2012-2017)
  •  Karl Jaspers Center for Transcultural Relations, University of Heidelberg  (Germany)   Visiting research fellowship,  Sept.-Dec.  2015.
  • Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation) Central Asia Research and Training Initiative grant (with Nazykbek Kydyrmyshev), 2012-2014; with Saule Ualieyeva (2009-2010)
  • Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Bonn, Germany    Humboldt Advanced Research Fellowship, 2009-10
  • Berkshire Conference Article Prize, 2006