Author

Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby

JEANMARIE ROUHIER-WILLOUGHBY is Professor of Russian, Folklore, and Linguistics at the University of Kentucky, where she has worked since 1994. She is the author of Village Values: Negotiating Identity, Resistance, and Gender in Urban Russian Life-Cycle Rituals (Slavica). Her latest project, The Russian Folk Religious Imagination, an online critical edition and archive in collaboration with two Russian scholars, combines her research interests in ritual and folk legends. In 2001 and in 2008 she was a Fulbright Scholar at Novosibirsk State University, where she taught in the Foreign Languages Department. She is a native of Washington, DC. She contributed the essay “Ten Important Legends and Folk Tales” to Russian Life’s 100 Things Everyone Should Know About Russia, but was, through an editing error, not credited in that feature.

Spirits of the Home and Forest
Russian Life: Nov/Dec 2012
Russian place spirits - including the domovoy, bannik, fleshy, rusalka and others - have a history that stretches back to Rus' pagan past. And despite the crush and frenzy of modern life, these spirits impact Russians to this day.
Author: Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby
Buy a Copy of this Issue

Spring Rites
Russian Life: Mar/Apr 2011
Easter and Maslenitsa are just two of the holidays that Russians celebrate to herald the end of winter and the beginning of spring - a time of rebirth and new life. In this counterpart to our Nov/Dec 2009 article on winter holidays, we explore the Russian rites of spring.
Author: Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby
Illustrations/Images: Artyom Kostyukevich
Buy a Copy of this Issue

Winter Holidays
Russian Life: Nov/Dec 2009
A colorful mix of pagan and Christian traditions influenced 19th century rural Russian Zimniye Svyatki (Winter Holidays). While many of these traditions did not survive the 20th century, they nonetheless tell us much about Russian culture today.
Author: Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby
Illustrations/Images: Julia Valeeva
Buy a Copy of this Issue