Please note: Jehanne has left the "International Comparative Studies Program" group at Duke University; some info here might not be up to date.
Jehanne Gheith is an Associate Professor of Russian Culture at Duke University and a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, who has experience working with Duke Hospice and now has a small private psychotherapy practice in Aging, Illness, and Wellness Transitions with a specialization in Pet Loss. At Duke, she led the International Comparative Studies Program for nine years, together with Marcy Litle, reshaping and building this interdisciplinary major. She has also chaired the Slavic Department. In both her academic and clinical work, Professor Gheith is interested in the intersection of narrative and loss; more recently, she has included the human-animal bond in this work. She regularly leads community conversations and workshops on making aging and crisis medical situations a richer experience than is often the case. In all of these areas, Professor Gheith's focus is on the intersection of story and loss and the richness that can come from exploring these connections in depth and in multiple dimensions. She is currently working on a book about the connections between her clinical work and her research in Russian literature.
| Office Location: | 321C Languages Bldg, 133 Franklin Center, Durham, NC 27708 |
| Office Phone: | (919) 660-3147 |
| Email Address: | |
Teaching (Spring 2024):
| Ph.D. | Stanford University | 1992 |
| MSW | UNC-Chapel Hill | 2009 |
| MA in Russian Literature | Stanford University, Stanford California | 1987 |
| BA in Russian Literature (summa cum laude) | Boston University, Boston, MA | 1983 |
Current projects: "Voices from the Gulag": will appear in January 2011 from Palgrave MacMillan, Book ms, "A Dog Named Stalin: Memory, Trauma and the Gulag,? is a study of the Gulag based on life-history oral accounts., New research project beginning on the emerging Russian Hospice movement
My book manuscript, "A Dog Named Stalin: Memory, Trauma and the Gulag," is a study of the Gulag based on life-history oral accounts. The analysis is based on multiple interviews I have conducted over five years with fifteen survivors of the Gulag and their children. The study is organized around three themes: 1) the effects of about fifty years of enforced silence on individual memory; 2) the problem of public mourning and memorialization; and 3) an investigation of the ways in which the category of trauma must be modified or altered to suit the Russian context. Because many common ("Western") assumptions about trauma in general, and particularly around trauma and the Holocaust, are not adequate for the Russian context, the exploration of culturally specific reasons for these differences on one of the key contributions made by my study.