
TEACHING
BEYOND THE GREAT DIVIDE: HUMANS, NONHUMANS, AND OUR ENTANGLED FUTURES
Undergraduate Seminar
What is “wilderness”? Common classifications divide the world into natural spaces like forests, grasslands, and deserts versus urban and rural environments, implying a firm boundary between the “wild” and the “domesticated.” But just how “wild” is wilderness—and how “settled” is settlement? ​This course examines these questions through an interdisciplinary lens, drawing from anthropology, historical ecology, Indigenous studies, and environmental history to interrogate the boundary between humans and our environments. Together, we’ll consider the social, ecological, and health consequences of viewing nature as something to conquer or control.
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Our journey will take us through landscapes shaped by human industry and then abandoned, where other species have since thrived. We’ll investigate the formation of national parks and their troubled histories of displacement, transforming them into symbols of untouched nature. We’ll also analyze failing attempts to engineer our way out of the escalating crises driven by climate change. ​Guided by pioneering thinkers—such as Anna Tsing, Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour, William Cronon, Elizabeth Povinelli, and Leslie Marmon Silko—this course challenges us to rethink the rigid division between the human and the non-human and to imagine more connected ways of
inhabiting the earth.

Smelyi Peak after the first winter snowfall, Sakhalin Island, November 2021.
RADIANT SECRETS: UNMASKING THE HIDDEN PASTS AND PRESENTS OF NUCLEARISM
Reading and Composition in Anthropology
“For some reason, the West thinks Russia will never use it,” Vladimir Putin remarked in a recent interview, referring to the potential use of nuclear weapons to defend Russia’s sovereignty against Western aggression. As tensions between nuclear superpowers rise, the world once again grapples with the cost of relying on nuclear energy. Setting aside Putin’s provocative claims, however, we must acknowledge that we have been living in a post-nuclear wasteland for over 80 years. This class will explore a series of questions emerging from this particular predicament: How did we learn “to stop worrying and love the bomb”? What does it mean to inhabit a world contaminated by debris that will outlast humanity? And where does our obsession with nuclearism ultimately lead us?
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Our class will be organized around these three main questions. In the first act, we will dwell on the defining moments in the history of the Atomic Age, reflecting on the role of the scientific community, governments, and private companies in the nuclear arms race. In the second act, we will examine the consequences of nuclearism on the environments and communities that were sacrificed during the process of nuclear development, deployment, and disposal. Finally, in the third act, we will reflect on the options for dealing with this toxic inheritance and building a just and ecologically sound future. In this journey, we’ll be accompanied by ethnographic and historical texts, as well as cultural productions, such as Dr. Strangelove (1964), Chernobyl (2019), and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968).
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In this class, we will develop skills in critical reading and argumentative writing that will help us cope with the pressing political and environmental concerns emerging in the era of nuclearism. In addition to conventional reading and writing techniques, we’ll explore approaches to analyzing evidence and crafting engaging texts that are unique to anthropology. Reading alongside Adriana Petryna and Joseph Masco, we’ll learn about thick description and defamiliarization, while Kate Brown and Magdalena Stawkowski will showcase the strategies for creating a captivating ethnographic narrative and amplifying the voices of our interlocutors. The course will be driven by three written assignments, each of them building towards the final paper. For the final paper, you will craft a thick description of Hunter’s Point in San Francisco, a key site for naval activities of the Cold War era that left a lasting environmental impact on the neighborhood and its people.

An art installation at the Roots open-air festival bringing attention to the problem of plastic waste, Primorsky Krai, June 2023
STOLEN LANDS: INDIGENOUS PASTS, SETTLER PRESENTS, DECOLONIAL FUTURES
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, we have witnessed a nascent decolonial movement emerging in Russia’s predominantly Indigenous periphery, which has been disproportionately affected by the imperialist and racist war machine. While this historic moment is unprecedented, the plight of Indigenous Siberians is neither unique nor new. Calls for decolonization—understood as the return of stolen lands and the recognition of sovereignty—are echoing from Indigenous communities worldwide.
​In this course, we will explore the historical context that has shaped Indigenous communities today, the available pathways to decolonization, and the lessons that can be drawn from Indigenous decolonial struggles globally. To this end, we will first examine issues of Indigenous sovereignty, settler colonialism, land rights, social change, natural resource development, and human-environmental relations. We will draw on historical and ethnographic works, as well as cultural productions from Russia, North and South America, and Australia. Next, we will put these specific histories in conversation with broader theoretical debates in Indigenous studies that respond to the continued colonial oppression of native people worldwide.