Pauly wins Fulbright grant for research in Ukraine

Prof. Matthew Pauly has won a 2016–17 Fulbright U.S. Scholar grant to Ukraine for research on a project, “City of Children: Juvenile Poverty, Crime, and Salvation in Odessa, 1881–1940.” Pauly will spend Fall 2016 at the Odessa I.I. Mechnikov National University (ONU), studying orphanages and children’s institutions in Odessa through two political eras (tsarist and Soviet) for a planned book manuscript. Odessa was a key city on the periphery of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union, a city that worried central authorities because its social problems appeared acute. In the urban space, local activists believed children could be easily harmed, but they also had a modernist faith in the city’s potential to transform through the application of science. This project investigates the motivations of Odessan activists through time, to examine how they promoted their goals, and to interrogate and contextualize their varied and often problematic notions of duty and morality.