Faculty

David C. Fisher joined the UTB faculty in 2006. He earned a Ph.D. in history from Indiana University in 2003 where he wrote a dissertation on Russian cultural identity and the West entitled “Exhibiting Russia at the World’s Fairs, 1851-1900.” Dr. Fisher also holds an M.A. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of North Carolina and a B.A. in Russian language from Tulane University. He has taught foreign language, area studies, and history at community colleges and universities in Los Angeles, Kansas, and Texas. From 1992 to 1995 Dr. Fisher served in St. Petersburg, Russia as the director of the Educational Information Center for Study in the United States.

Dr. Fisher’s research interests center on the formation of cultural identity in Russia, especially in the late-imperial period. His most recent publications include "The Rise of the Radical Intelligentsia, 1862-1881" in Events that Changed Russia since 1861 (Greenwood, 2007) and "Russia and the Crystal Palace in 1851” in Great Britain, the Empire and the World at the Great Exhibition, 1851 (Ashgate, 2007). He is currently researching the effort by tsarist authorities, intellectuals, and other elites to counteract the persistent image of a “barbaric” Russia in the Western mind by defining Russian “civilization” as an alternative to the Western model.

Dr. Fisher teaches courses in European, World, and United States history. His classes require critical reading, discussion, and effective writing. Students describe him as “knowledgeable … fair … interesting, but doesn’t drone on.” Although some complain that his courses are “too hard,” others admit they “… enjoyed his class … learned a lot …would definitely take another,” and at least one confesses “I have never loved history until I took his class.”