Siberia: Russia's Eastern Frontier

REES 513 Siberia: Russia’s Eastern Frontier is a new course that is being offered for the first time this semester. It will be complimentary to an existing course, REES 512 Siberia: Yesterday and Today, which will be reorganized in future semesters to emphasize the literature, history, culture, art, and sociology of Siberia. The new course will focus on geography, climate, ecology, archeology, ethnography and the Indigenous Peoples of Siberia. We will strive to ensure that the two courses do not extensively overlap and you are not required to take the both courses (each will be designed to stand alone).

REES 513 Siberia: Russia’s Eastern Frontier is cross listed as GINS 504, GINS 508, GIST 793, and HIST 510.

The geographical area covered by REES 513 extends from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, from the Arctic Ocean to Central Asia, Mongolia, China, and Korea. This is a view of Siberia “writ large” and does not map onto the narrower definitions of Siberia that are used by geographers in Russia. For our purposes we can consider Siberia as synonymous with northern Asia.

COURSE DESCRIPTION AND OBJECTIVES

An interdisciplinary course examining the land, people, culture, and society of the vast expanse in northern Asia known as “Siberia”. The territory covered extends from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, from the Arctic Ocean to Central Asia, Mongolia, China, and Korea. Its time frame reaches from antiquity to the present, including both Siberia’s indigenous peoples and European and Asian immigrants. Areas of inquiry represented are, e. g. geology, archaeology, geography, ethnography, education and science, folklore, literature, the arts, natural and human resources, politics, and the environment. Since there is only minimal overlap with REES 512 Siberia Yesterday and Today it can be taken with benefit by students who have completed the previous course.

Principal instructors:

Professor Gerald Mikkelson

Guest lecturers:

Doug Causey (Biology, University of Alaska at Anchorage)
Dr. Cynthia Annett (University of Alaska at Anchorage)
Arienne Dwyer (Anthropology)
Erik Herron (Political Science)
John Hoopes (Anthropology, Indigenous Nations Studies)
Helen Hundley (History, Wichita State)
Margarita Karnysheva (History)
Maia Kipp (Russian Studies, Theatre and Drama)
Bruce Menning (History, Fort Leavenworth)
Mariya Omelicheva (Political Science);
Maria Ostanina (Gorno-Altaisk)
Ray Pierotti (Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Indigenous Nations)
Norman Saul (History, Emeritus)
Andrei Tolstikov (Tyumen)
John Van Orman (Ozarka College) and Teresa Van Orman (Ozark Craft School)

REQUIRED TEXTBOOKS

Between Heaven and Hell: The Myth of Siberia in Russian Culture, edited by Galya Diment and Yuri Slezkine (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993).
Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy, The Siberian Curse: How Communist Planners Left Russia Out in the Cold (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2003).
The History of Siberia: From Russian Conquest to Revolution, edited and introduced by Alan Wood (New York: Rutledge Press, 1991).
The National Geographic Map of Russian