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Rebecca Friedman: From History to Public Humanities

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Rebecca Friedman: From History to Public Humanities

Introduction to Dr. Rebecca Friedman. 1:53 min. Interview: Raymond Elman.  Post-Production: Lee Skye. Music:  Simon Mogul.  Recorded via ZOOM  6/30/2025, Miami.

 

DR. REBECCA FRIEDMAN is the Founding Director of the Public Humanities Lab (PHL) and a Professor of History at Florida International University. Friedman has been a leader at FIU in several capacities. She served as the Director of the European Union Center of Excellence/European and Eurasian Studies for over eight years and served as the Faculty Fellow in the Office of the Provost from 2012-2022. In 2018, she was named the Founding Director of the PHL. Friedman has collaboratively secured over 10 million dollars in research and institution-building grants for the university. She is a leading point of contact for the university in Miami’s arts and cultural communities. Her community-facing projects include Mellon-Funded Community Data Curation and Mellon-funded Commons for Justice: Race, Risk Resilience. She has also worked with Florida Humanities on their inaugural Humanities Festival (2024). She has co-curated I Am Little Haiti at Green Space Miami and Bold. Black. Baldwin. at IPC ArtSpace in Little Haiti.

Friedman is the Director of Research for FIU’s iWitness: IPC Institute for Visual Journalism. In this capacity, she oversees research projects on topics including immigration and climate change in Latin America and the Caribbean and global diasporas. The Institute is building a think tank, curriculum, archive and public-facing activations.

Her doctorate is in the history and culture of modern Russia. Her monographs include “Modernity, Domesticity and Temporality in Modern Russia: Time at Home” (Bloomsbury, 2020) and her 2006 book on the history of masculinity in “Russia — Masculinity, Autocracy and the Russian University, 1804-1863.”  As a leader in her field, she edited (with Barbara Clements and Dan Healy) Russian Masculinities in History and Culture, which is the first volume in English to focus on the growing field of Russian masculinity studies. She edited (with Markus Thiel), European Identity and Culture: Narratives of Transnational Belonging (Routledge, 2012). She is currently co-editing a Cambridge University Press series on Elements in Soviet and Post-Soviet History.

— FIU Stephen J. Green School of International & Public Affairs — Public Humanities Lab

 

The videos below were recorded via Zoom, are organized by Success Factor, and run between 30 seconds and 6 minutes. Click on any video. You must be connected to the Internet to view the videos.

 

EXPOSURE TO BROAD INFLUENCES:    1:21 min.

Where did you grow up, and what was your first awareness of art of any discipline?

 

DEVELOP A VOICE:    1:03 min.

Do you still play an instrument?

 

SEIZES OPPORTUNITIES:    4:08 min.

Where did you go to school, and what did you learn that still informs you today?

 

SERENDIPITY:    1:10 min.

Some of the people I interviewed at the Miami Book Fair — Karen Dukess and her husband Steve Liesman, Peter Baker and his wife Susan Glasser — were journalists in Russia in the 1980s-90s. Do you know them?

 

CRITICAL THINKING:    5:22 min.

You wrote a book titled “Masculinity, Autocracy and the Russian University, 1804-1863.” Why?

 

VALUES FIRST-RATE EDUCATION:     1:17 min.

Some of the smartest people I know, who are in their 70s and 80s, graduated from the University of Michigan, and will never miss a UM football game.

 

CRITICAL THINKING:     2:06 min.

How did Russia go from Glasnost and Perestroika to the Putin domination era?

 

CREATES A UNIQUE PERSONAL BRAND:     2:44 min.

Tell us about your second book, “Modernity, Domesticity and Temporality in Russia: Time at Home.”

 

CREATES A UNIQUE PERSONAL BRAND:    4:24 min.

Tell us about your evolution from Russian history professor to Public Humanities Lab impresario.

 

SEIZES OPPORTUNITIES:    3:15 min

How did you meet photographer Carl-Phillipe Juste and get involved with Miami’s Haitian community?

 

CRITICAL THINKING:    6:10 min

Tell us about “A Call to the Ancestors” project.

 

UNDERSTANDS THE AUDIENCE’S PERSPECTIVE:    1:20 min. 

Do you track the demographics of your projects?

 

UNDERSTANDS THE BUSINESS OF ART:    3:26 min.

You are particularly successful at fundraising for your projects. How did that skill evolve?

 

INSIGHT & INSPIRATION:    0:42 sec.

What’s your favorite movie?