Benjamin Zajicek

Biography

Benjamin Zajicek joined the History Department in 2010. He was awarded a PhD from the University of Chicago for his dissertation, “Scientific Psychiatry in Stalin's Soviet Union: The Politics of Modern Medicine and the Struggle to Define ‘Pavlovian’ Psychiatry, 1939-1953.” His research focuses on the Soviet Union in the Stalin era, particularly the history of professions and the history of psychiatry. He is currently working on a book manuscript titled “Soviet Psychiatry under Stalin.”

Peer Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters

• “Soviet Psychiatry and the Origins of the Sluggish Schizophrenia Concept, 1912-1936,” History of the Human Sciences, 31, no. 2 (2018): 88-105 .
• "Banning the Soviet Lobotomy: Psychiatry, Ethics, and Professional Politics during Late Stalinism," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 91, no. 1 (Spring 2017).
• “A Soviet System of Professions: Psychiatry, Professional Jurisdiction, and the Soviet Academy of Medical Sciences, 1932-1951,” inRussian and Soviet Healthcare from an International Perspective: Comparing Professions, Practice, and Gender, 1880-1960, Susan Grant, ed. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
• “Insulin Coma Therapy and the Construction of Therapeutic Effectiveness in Stalin’s Soviet Union, 1936-1953,” in Psychiatry in Communist Europe, Matt Savelli and Sarah Marks, eds. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
• “Soviet Madness: Mild Schizophrenia, Mental Hygiene, and the Professional Jurisdiction of Psychiatry, 1918-1936,” Ab Imperio no. 4 (2014): 167-194.

Awards and Honors

Social Sciences Research Council Eurasia Program Dissertation Write-up Fellowship, 2007-2008.
Jacob K. Javits Fellowship, US Department of Education, 2005-2006, 2001-2004.
Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Grant, US Department of Education, 2004-2005.

COURSES TAUGHT
FALL 2018
HIST 103	History of European Civilization From the 17th Century
HIST 103	History of European Civilization From the 17th Century
HIST 300	Introduction to Historical Study
HIST 300	Introduction to Historical Study