Sergei Kan

I was born in the USSR in 1953 and attended public school there as well as studied for three years at the History Department of Moscow State University. I immigrated to the United States with my family in 1974 and completed my undergraduate education at Boston University in 1976, majoring in anthropology and religion. At BU I had the pleasure of studying with two brilliant anthropologists: Dennis Tedlock and Eva Hunt. I then pursued my doctorate in anthropology at the University of Chicago in 1976-1982 where I was fortunate to study with such outstanding scholars as George W. Stocking, Jr., Raymon D. Fogelson, Paul Friedrich, Nancy Munn, John Comaroff and Jean Comaroff. After receiving my Ph.D. in 1982 I taught in the Anthropology Department of the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) between 1983 and 1989. In the fall of 1989 I began my career as Professor of Anthropology at Dartmouth College and have been there ever since. My anthropological and (ethno)historical research has ranged from the culture and history of the Tlingit people of Alaska, anthropology of death and dying, anthropology of religion, photography and Native Alaskans, Russian-Native relations in Alaska, and the history of anthropology. As far as the last topic is concerned, I am particularly interested in the history of Russian anthropology of the late imperial and early soviet eras as well as the history of American anthropology of the late 19th and the first half of the 20th century. Currently I am researching an intellectual biography of Paul Radin (1883-1959), one of Franz Boas's most brilliant students and a major figure in US anthropology of that era.