Associate Professor Katya Hokanson has published A Woman’s Empire: Russian Women and Imperial Expansion in Asia University of Toronto Press. Professor Hokanson’s book explores a new dimension of Russian imperialism, that of women actively engaged in the process of late imperial expansion, investigating how women writers, travelers and scientists who traveled to Central Asia and beyond participated in Russia’s “civilizing” and colonizing mission, utilizing new-found education and other opportunities for women but also navigating powerful discourses of male-dominated science and socially-defined femininity. This study shows how women’s voices and activities were part of the Russian imperial project and that women’s writing had an explicitly imperial identity.