Rate My Professor Julie Fairbanks

Dr. Fairbanks focuses her research on the ways that people display and maintain their identities, particularly examining performance and memory in the Caucasus region of Russia, as well as the history of ethnography in this region. Her publications include "Engaged with the Caucasus: Life and Work of Leonid Ivanovich Lavrov" and a book review of "Rites of Place: Public Commemoration in Russia and Eastern Europe," edited by Julie Buckler and Emily D. Johnson (Northwestern University Press, 2013), published in the Anthropology of East Europe Review 32(1), Spring 2014, pages 79-80. She has presented her research at scholarly conferences, including the Central States Anthropological Society on topics such as "Images of Tradition: Soviet Ethnographic Literature," the Soviet project of mastering USSR territory, and "Space and Place-Making in Greater Sochi, Russia" at ASEEES. Dr. Fairbanks teaches introductory courses, methods and theory courses in anthropology, along with classes on globalization, food, performance, memory, and Russia. She engages students in applied ethnographic work, including community projects related to the environment and homelessness; for instance, students in her Ethnographic Methods class researched factors leading to homelessness in Cedar Rapids, presented at the 2017 Student Research Symposium. Additionally, she delivers public lectures through Coe College's Thursday Forum series, such as the 2023 two-week "Perspectives on Russia," providing an overview of the Caucasus region and its nuanced relationships to the Russia-Ukraine war from perspectives within Russia and neighboring areas.