Sheila Fitzpatrick
Sheila Fitzpatrick | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 4 June 1941 |
| Citizenship | Australian, American |
| Occupations | Historian, academic |
| Relatives | Brian Fitzpatrick |
| Awards | Mellon Foundation Award |
| Academic background | |
| Education | University of Melbourne St Antony's College, Oxford |
| Thesis | The Commissariat of Education under Lunacharsky (1917–1921) (1969) |
| Max Hayward | |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Modern history |
Sub-discipline | History of the Soviet Union |
School or tradition | Chicago School of Soviet history Revisionist School of Soviet studies |
| Institutions | London School of Slavonic and East European Studies (1969–1972) Columbia University (1976–1980) University of Texas at Austin (1980–1989) University of Chicago (1990–2012) University of Sydney (2010–) Australian Catholic University (2012–) |
Doctoral students | Mark Edele |
Main interests | Stalinism Soviet culture Soviet education everyday life |
Notable works | Beyond Totalitarianism (2009) Everyday Stalinism (1999) Stalin's Peasants (1994) |
| Website | sydney |
Sheila Mary Fitzpatrick (born 4 June 1941) is an Australian historian, whose main subjects are history of the Soviet Union and history of modern Russia, especially the Stalin era and the Great Purges, of which she proposes a "history from below", and is part of the "revisionist school" of Communist historiography. She has also critically reviewed the concept of totalitarianism and highlighted the differences between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in debates about comparison of Nazism and Stalinism.
Fitzpatrick is professor at the Australian Catholic University (Melbourne), honorary professor at the University of Sydney, and Distinguished Service Professor Emerita at the University of Chicago. Prior to this, she taught Soviet history at the University of Texas at Austin and was the Bernadotte Everly Schmitt Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. She is considered a founder of the field of Soviet social history.