Faculty Fellow
Department of Anthropology
April 3, 2023
In her article published in Focaal Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, Faculty Fellow Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer contextualizes the rise in prominence of the Sakha shaman Alexander Gabyshev following his critique of Russia's corrupt society. Balzer examines why he became popular and how he became a threat to Russia's authorities, especially influential Russian Orthodox elites.
April 19, 2022
February 25, 2022
Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer on Galvanizing Nostalgia? Indigeneity and Sovereignty in Siberia
Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer is a research professor in the School of Foreign Service, co-convener of the Indigenous Studies Working Group, and a Berkley Center faculty fellow. She has been at Georgetown since 1987 in the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies (CERES) and the Anthropology Department, and has twice been a Doyle Faculty Fellow through the Berkley Center. She is editor of the Taylor and Francis journal Anthropology and Archeology of Eurasia and is author or editor of six books on Russia, Central Asia, and the Circumpolar North. Her research interests focus on the intersections of religion, politics, ecology, human rights, and comparative indigenous activism. Her latest book, based on fieldwork in three republics, is Galvanizing Nostalgia: Indigeneity and Sovereignty in Siberia (Cornell University Press, 2021).
