Alfred Joseph Rieber Papers UPT 50 R548

Summary Information

Prepared by

Kaiyi Chen

Preparation date

June 2005

Date [inclusive]

1960-1995

Extent

3.0 Cubic feet

PROVENANCE

Transferred to the University Archives with the records of the History Department in 1995.

ARRANGEMENT

The Alfred J. Rieber Papers are organized into one series, General File, which is arranged alphabetically by topic.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Alfred Joseph Rieber was born in Mount Vernon, New York, in 1931. After receiving his B.A. from Colgate University in 1953, he attended the Russian (now Harriman) Institute of Columbia University and graduated with his M.A. in 1954 and Ph.D. in 1959. His doctoral program included one year (1958-1959) at Moscow State University, where he studied as a Columbia Traveling Fellow in the first U.S.-Soviet Cultural Exchange Program. He taught at Northwestern University from 1959 to 1965, first as Assistant Professor and later as Associate Professor. In 1965, he was appointed Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. His administrative appointments at Penn include Chairmanship of the History Department from 1967 to 1972 and Associate Deanship of the School of Arts and Sciences from 1974 to 1976. In 1997, Rieber became a professor emeritus.

As a noted scholar of Russian History, Rieber won numerous fellowships and awards, among them the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1965, American Council of Learned Societies Exchange Fellowship with the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1966, National Endowment for the Humanities Senior Fellowship in 1973, the Ford Foundation Grant for Faculty Enrichment in 1984, and National Council for Soviet and East European Studies Fellowship in 1986. In addition, he received the Lindbach Teaching Award at Penn in 1967 and the E. Harris Harbison Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1969. His major publications are Stalin and the French Communist Party, 1941-1947 (1962), The Politics of Autocracy (1966), Merchants and Entrepreneurs in Imperial Russia (1982) and Zhdanov in Finland (1995).

SCOPE AND CONTENT

The papers of Alfred J. Rieber include his files as Chairman of the History Department at Penn, 1967-1972; correspondence, 1960-1995; references and recommendations, 1960-1994; research of students and scholars, 1973-1992; syllabi, 1959-1994; and teaching files, 1972-1994.

Controlled Access Headings

Corporate Name(s)

University of Pennsylvania. School of Arts and Sciences. — General subdivision–Faculty.;

Geographic Name(s)

Russia–History–Study and teaching.

Soviet Union–History–Study and teaching.

Occupation(s)

Historians–Pennsylvania–Philadelphia.

Subject(s)

History–Study and teaching–Pennsylvania–Philadelphia.

Inventory