Rate My Professor Roxanne Easley

Roxanne Easley, Ph.D., is Professor and Chair of the History Department at Central Washington University, where she also serves as Graduate Coordinator. A specialist in Russian history, her research interests include Russian political culture in the Era of Great Reforms, the abolition of serfdom, and the history of Russian imperial strategies, particularly in Siberia and Russian America. She earned a B.A. in History summa cum laude from the University of California, Davis in 1986, an M.A. in Russian History in 1991, a Graduate Certificate in Russian and East European Studies in 1993, and a Ph.D. in Russian History in 1997 from the University of Oregon. As an International Research and Exchanges Board Advanced Research Fellow, she was affiliated with Moscow State University, Department of Nineteenth-Century Russian History, from 1994 to 1995.

Easley joined Central Washington University as Assistant Professor in 1997, advancing to Associate Professor in 2003 and Professor in 2008. She has chaired the History Department from 2013 to 2019 and since 2022, and served as President of the United Faculty of Central from 2013 to 2017. Her courses include World History I-III, Medieval Europe, Imperial Russian History, Soviet History, Russian Women’s History, Stalin and Stalinism, and graduate historiography. Awards include CWU Distinguished Professor of Teaching (2009), CWU College of Arts and Humanities Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award (2006), CWU Alumni Association Excellence in Teaching Award (2001), CWU College of Arts and Humanities Outstanding Faculty Research Award (2009), and Washington State Historical Society Charles Gates Award (2009). Research grants encompass National Park Service Scholar in Park (2015-2016) and multiple CWU research appointments and fellowships. Key publications are the monograph The Emancipation of the Serfs in Russia: Peace Arbitrators and the Formation of Civil Society (Routledge, 2008), co-authored Modern Russian History: The Search for National Identity and Global Power (Cognella Academic, 2020), and articles such as “Opening Public Space: The Peace Arbitrator and Rural Politicization, 1861-1864” (Slavic Review, 2002), “Demographic Borderlands: People of Mixed Heritage in the Russian American Company and the Hudson's Bay Company, 1670-1870” (Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 2008), “Russian-American Creole Policy in Practice: Iakov Egorovich Netsvetov” (Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 2017), and “A.F. Kashevarov, the Great Reforms, and Russian Colonial Identities” (Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 2023). She has presented at conferences in Russia and the United States.