Sergei A. Kan
Professor
Appointments
Professor of Anthropology
Jewish Studies
Russian Studies
Faculty Associate, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University
Affiliated Faculty, University of Haifa, Israel
Area of Expertise
cultural anthropology,
ethnohistory,
photographs as an ethnohistorical document,
death and dying,
history of anthropology,
Alaska Natives, particularly Tlingit,
Russia,
ethnography of the Jewish diaspora,
ethnicity and nationalism
Biography
As a scholar of Native American ethnology and ethnohistory, I have been interested in ways in which Alaska Native (particularly Tlingit) cultures have changed over time while preserving some of their core values and maintaining a distinct indigenous identity. I have also researched the history of American and Russian anthropology, particularly the interaction between Boasian and Russian anthropology from the early 1900s through the 1940s. Recently I completed an intellectual biography of Alexander Goldenweiser (1880-1940), a porminent American anthropologist of Russian-Jewish descent. Currently I am also preparing for publication an annotated book of photographs taken in Sitka, Alaska by Elbridge W. Merrill(1897-1929). A new project in the history of anthropology that I have recently began is an intellectual biography of another major American anthropologist of the first half of the 20th centruy -- Paul Radin (1883-1959).
Education
Moscow State University
B.A. Boston University
M.A. University of Chicago
Ph.D. University of Chicago
Taught Courses
Publications
A Maverick Boasian: The Life and Work of Alexander Goldenweiser. University of Nebraska Press. Forthcoming in 2022.
Book Sharing Our Knowledge: the Tlingit and Their Coastal Neighbors. University of Nebraska Press. 2015.
http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Sharing-Our-Knowledge,675970.a…
Book Vincent Soboleff: A Russian-American Photographer in Tlingit Country. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 2013.
The 2015 Western History Association Joan Patterson Kerr Award for the best illustrated book on the American West.
http://www.oupress.com/ECommerce/Book/Detail/1738/a%20russian%20america…
Book Symbolic Immortality: the Tlingit Potlatch of the Nineteenth Century. Second Edition (Revised and expanded). University of Washington Press. 2015.
[1990 Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award].
Book Memory Eternal: Tlingit Culture and Russian Orthodox Christianity through Two Centuries. University of Washington Press. 1999.
Edited Volume and Journal A collection of paper entitled “Individuals and Groups of Mixed Russian-Native Parentage in Siberia, Russian America, and Alaska.” Ethnohistory 60 (3). 2013.
Edited Volume and Journal Perspectives on Native North America: Cultures, Histories, and Representations. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. (Co-edited with Pauline Turner Strong). 2006.
Book Lev Shternberg, Anthropologist, Russian Socialist, Jewish Activist. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 2009.
http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Lev-Shternberg,673329.aspx
Edited Volume and Journal Strangers to Relatives: The Adoption and Naming of Anthropologists in Native North America. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 2001.
Article. 2016. (Co-authored with Dmitry Arzyutov) Bernhard J. Stern (1894-1960) and the Saga of Publishing Lewis Henry Morgan's Collected Works in pre-World War II Soviet Russia. PP. 149-220 In Histories of Anthropology Annual, vol. 10. Ed. by Regna Darnell and Frederick Gleach. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. 2016
Article 2016. To Study Our Past, Make Sense of Our Present and Develop Our National Consciousness: Lev Shternberg’s Comprehensive Program for Jewish Ethnography in Soviet Russia. Pp. 64-84 In Going to the People: Jews and the Ethnographic Impulse. Ed. by Dov-Ber Kerler and Jeffrey Veidlinger. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press.
Article 2015. The Falling Out Between Alexander Goldenweiser and Robert Lowie: Two Prsonalities, Two VIsions of Anthropology. Pp. 1-31 In From Corridor Talk to Culture History. History of Anthropology Annual, vol. 9. Ed. by Regna Darnell and Frederick Gleach.
University of Washington Press.
Article 2013. Sergei Ionovich Kostromitinov (1854-1915) or "Colonel George Kostrometinoff": from a Creole Teenager to the Number One Russian-American Citizen of Sitka. Ethnohistory 60(3): 385-402.
Article 2009 Alexander Goldenweiser’s Politics. Pp. 182-199 In Histories of Anthropology Annual. Vol. 5. Ed. by Regna Darnell and Frederick Gleach. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Article 2008 Evolutionism and Historical Particularism at the St. Petersburg Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. Museum Anthropology 31(1): 28-46.
Article 2006 “My Old Friend in a Dead-end of Skepticism and Empiricism”: Boas, Bogoras, and the Politics of Soviet Anthropology of the late 1920s-early 1930s. Pp. 32-68 In Histories of Anthropology Annual. Vol. 2. Ed. by Regna Darnell and Frederick Gleach. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Article 2006 Events and Nonevents on the Tlingit/Russian/American Colonial Frontier, 1802-1879. Pp. 310-327 In Perspectives on Native North America: Cultures, Histories, and Representations. Sergei Kan and Pauline Turner Strong, eds. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Article 2004 It's Only Half a Mile from Savagery to Civilization: American Tourists and Southeastern Alaska Natives in the Late Nineteenth Century. Pp. 201-220 In Coming to Shore: Northwest Coast Ethnology, Traditions and Visions. Marie Mauzé, Michael Harkin, and Sergei Kan, eds. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Article 2001 Friendship, Family, and Fieldwork: One Anthropologist's Adoption by Two Tlingit Families. Pp. 185-217 In Strangers to Relatives: The Adoption and Naming of Anthropologists in Native North America. Sergei Kan, ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Article 1996 Clan Mothers and Godmothers: Tlingit Women and Russian Orthodox Christianity, 1840-1940. Native American Women's Responses to Christianity. Special Issue of Ethnohistory, vol. 43(4): 613-641. Ed. by Michael Harkin and Sergei Kan.
Article 1991 Shamanism and Christianity: Modern-day Tlingit Elders Look at the Past. Ethnohistory 38 (4): 363-387
Article 1989 Cohorts, Generations, and Their Culture: the Tlingit Potlatch in the 1980s. Anthropos 84:405-422.
Article 1987 Memory Eternal: Russian Orthodoxy and the Tlingit Mortuary Complex. Arctic Anthropology 24 (1):32-55.
Article 1986 The Nineteenth-century Tlingit Potlatch: a New Perspective. American Ethnologist 13 (2):191-212. [American Society for Ethnohistory 1987 Robert F. Heizer Prize for the Best Article in the Field].
Article 2017 (Co-authored with Dmitry Arzyutov) ' The Concept of the "Field" in Early Soviet Ethnography: A Northern Perspective. Sibirica: Interdisciplinary Journal of Siberian Studies, vol vol. 16, no. 1: 31–74.
Article 2018 Was Lev Shternberg Just Another Classical Evolutionist. Pp. 267-279 In Jochelson, Bogoras and Shternberg: A Scientific Exploration of the Russian Far East and the Shaping of Soviet Ethnography. Ed. by Erich Kasten. Verlag der Kulturschiftung Sibirien. Furstenberg/Havel, Germany.
Article 2018 Unites States, Anthropology. International Encyclopedia of Anthropology. pp. 6280-6309. Ed. by Hilary Callan. Wiley-Blackwell.
Article 2019 Raymond D. Fogelson's "The Ethnohistory of Events and Non-Events." Ethnohistory 66 (1): 170-177.
Electronic article 2019 . Mainstream or Marginal Boasian? An Intellectual Biography of Robert H. Lowie. In Bérose - Encyclopédie internationale des histoires de l’anthropologie, Paris, IIAC LAHIC, UMR 8177. URL: http://www.berose.fr/?Mainstream-or-Marginal-Boasian-An-Intellectual-Biography-of-Robert-H-Lowie
Electronic article. 2020. “True Heirs to a Heroic Russian Past” or “Russians in Name Only”:
Sitka Creoles as Seen by the Late Nineteenth Century Russian Orthodox Clergy. Journal of Frontier Studies 5 (4): 12-37.
Bernhard H. Stern, an American Apologist for Stalinism. History of Anthropology
Review. February 25, 2021 (online).
https://histanthro.org/notes/bernhard-j-stern-an-american-apologist-for…
Frants Boas i Sovetskaia Rossiia: 25 Let Ambivalentnosti [Franz Boas and Soviet Russia: 25 Years of Ambivalence]. Sibirskie Istoriheskie Issledovaniia 1: 40-61. 2021.
[Siberian Historical Studies] (In Russian).
Orthodox Church Brotherhoods of the Sitka Creoles, 1870s-1910s. Alaska History, vol. 36(1): 54-71. 2021.
Speaking Engagements
Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University, October 14, 2020
"Alexander Goldenweiser: An American Anthropologist with Russian Jewish Roots."
Annual Meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory, Nashville, TN, 2016
"Moisei Krol's Return to the Jewish People via Ethnographic Research among the Buryats."
Paper presented at the 2020 Meeting of the European Association of Social Anthropologists. Lisbon, Portugal, July 22, 2020.
Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Denver, 2015
Fr. Andrew Kashevaroff (1863-1940), an Ethnologist of Alaska Native Cultures.
Paper presented in the Americanist Seminar, Moscow, Russia, November 21, 2020
International Conference “Going to the People: Jews and the Ethnographic Impulse.” Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, 2013
Fifth International Conference on Russian America, Mariehamn, Finland, 2012
Tlingit Clan Conferences; Sitka, Alaska, 2012; Juneau, Alaska, 2017, 2015, 2013
Annual Meeting of the American Society for Ethnohistory, Indianapolis, IN, 2014
Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, San Francisco, 2012
Annual Meeting, American Anthropological Association, Vancouver, Canada, 2019
American Society for Ethnohistory, Annual Meeting, Oaxaca, Mexico, 2018
A Russian Amercan Photographer in Tlingit Country: Vincent Soboleff in Alaska
Lecture (in Russian) Sponsored by the United States Embassy, Russia. Moscow, Russia, May 17, 2017
Works in Progress
Book: A Multi-Ethnic Alaska Town: Sitka as Depicted by Elbridge W. Merrill's Photographs (1890s-1920s) (book)
A Russian translation of my 2009 book Lev Shternberg: Anthropologist, Russian Socialist, Jewish Activist. Academic Studies Press.
An intellectual biography of Paul Radin (1883-1959), a major figure in American anthropology of the first half of the twentieth century.
Selected Works & Activities
As a member of the Organizing Committee: preparing the Fall 2021 Conference "Sharing Our Knowledge": a venue that brings together academic and tribal scholars and activists working on Tlingit culture and history
Contact
-
Tlingit Clan leaders with their Wolf Post dedicated at the 1904 poltatch in Sitka. Photograph by William E. Merrill, Sitka, Alaska, 1904 (Courtesy of Sitka National Historical Park; W. E. Merrill Photographic Collection, SITK3765)
-
Alaska Native (mostly Tlingit) students of the Sitka Training School (Presbyterain boarding school). Photograph by William E. Merrill, ca. early 1900s. (Photogrpah courtesy of Sitka National Historical Park, SITK3752).
-
Alexander A. Goldenweiser