About

Svetlana Rasmussen, Ph.D.,  is a History teacher at the Academy of Our Lady of Guam. Rasmussen has defended her dissertation “Rearing the Collective: Evolution of the Soviet School Values and Practices, 1953 -1968” in Fall 2019. Born in Perm, Russia, Svetlana Rasmussen first came to the United States in 2006 as a Fulbright scholar to study American History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with Dr. Jeannette Eileen Jones. After defending her M.A. thesis, “‘Searching for Answers, for an Identity, for a Cause to Espouse:’ Ethnic Resurgence in the United States, 1963-1974,” Rasmussen returned to Russia to share her expertise in her home community. In 2010, Rasmussen returned to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to begin her Ph.D. studies in Russian history with Professor Ann Kleimola. Rasmussen’s dissertation examines collectives, essential Soviet social groups that organized the Soviet networks of control and surveillance.

Throughout her career, Rasmussen has assumed a variety of teaching roles. In Perm, she taught English as a foreign language to middle school, high school, and university students. At the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Rasmussen served as a teaching assistant in a variety of classes offered by the Department of History and the Department of Classics and Religious Studies. Since 2013, Rasmussen has served as a tutor in History and Russian for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Athletics Department.

 

Both in Perm and in Lincoln, Rasmussen has been involved in a variety of community projects. She has served as a judge for the History Day Nebraska state tournament every year since 2012. Since 2016, Rasmussen has also been a reviewer on the Undergraduate Creative Acts and Research Experience (UCARE) project selection committee. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln UCARE program awards grants to support undergraduate research and creative activity.

 

Most recently, Rasmussen has organized a pre-conference workshop on Prozhito at the ASEEES 51st annual convention in 2019 and presented her research on the evolution of the Soviet secondary school system from 1917 to 1958, origins of the collectives at schools, the analysis of the Soviet school photographic narratives, and the Photoarcheology project at the Graduate Student Workshop at the University of California, Berkeley, the 57th Annual Meeting of the History of Education Society, and the 2017 ASEEES Annual Convention.