Karen Petrone

Dr. Karen Petrone joined the University of Kentucky Faculty in 1994.  She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Russian History and Literature at Harvard College and her Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in History at the University of Michigan.   

Dr.  Petrone is Professor of History and the Co-Director of the University of Kentucky-Jewish Heritage Fund Holocaust Education Initiative, a state-wide professional learning program for middle and high school teachers. In 2025, she was appointed as the Zantker Professor in Jewish History. She served as Chair of the Department of History from 2011-2015 and 2016-2020 and was named College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor in 2017-2018.

Dr. Petrone has taught at every level of the college curriculum from 100-level core courses through graduate seminars and has directed more than a dozen Ph.D. dissertations.  She has also led students in study abroad courses in Belgium, France, the Czech Republic, Poland and Ukraine. She won the Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Teaching in 1998.

Dr. Petrone’s primary research interests are in cultural history, gender history, propaganda, and war and memory, especially in Russia and the Soviet Union.  Her single-authored monographs are  Life Has Become More Joyous, Comrades: Celebrations in the Time of Stalin (2000) and The Great War in Russian Memory (2011). She is currently completing a book on war memory in Putin's Russia. She has also co-written a textbook, co-edited several essay collections and authored more than 30 articles.

Dr. Petrone and her husband Ken Slepyan, who teaches at Transylvania University, are both native New Yorkers.  They have a daughter and son-in-law who reside in Washington, DC, and a daughter who lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.