Profiles:

https://u.osu.edu/arzyutov/
Academia.edu
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I am a historian who is intellectually and emotionally connected to anthropological ideas and long-term fieldwork, and an anthropologist who has fallen in love with diachronic interpretations of social and cultural practices. My bi-disciplinary identity is shaped by my curiosity about our everyday lives, which are inseparable from our imaginations. I am interested in how the paths, ideas, and practices of scholars and the people they collaborate with intersect, coevolve, and ultimately shape our “stable” notions of the environment, materiality, social life, and the past. This curiosity drives me to constantly move between the vibrant “field” in the Arctic/Siberia (predominantly with Nenets and Altaians) and the secluded and dusty “archives,” where I find inspiration and develop most of my ideas. The arguments in my writings often revolve around the intertwined lives of anthropological and natural science ideas, the long-term dynamics of human-environment interactions in the circumpolar North, and how these are narrated and inscribed in the scholarship and novels of Indigenous and settler-colonial authors.

I am currently finalizing my first book manuscript, “The Northern Book of Origin: Siberian Indigenous Narratives and Metropolitan Ethnogenesis Theories” (under contract with the University of Nebraska Press). This work explores the history of how Russian and Soviet anthropologists, archaeologists, and linguists have constructed theories of Indigenous origin (ethnogenesis) based on stories recorded from Siberian and Northern Indigenous communities about underground dwellers who coexisted with or preceded today’s Indigenous peoples, as well as on artifacts they collected. Through this exploration, the book uncovers the intricate dynamics of knowledge (co-)production between scholars and communities under various political regimes, and highlights how these evolving theories have shaped—and, at times, strained—academic connections worldwide.

My second book project explores the environmental and Indigenous history of the remote Arctic archipelago of Novaya Zemlya.

I enjoy teaching a variety of courses related to Russian and Eurasian histories and cultures.
 

Independent Study/Research Internship: The Right to Write: Documenting Minoritized Literatures and Cultures in Russia (in class, together with Dr. Philip Tuxbury-Gleissner; SP 2025)

Russian 8550: Writing on the “Margins”: Indigenous Siberian and Northern Literatures (in class, Graduate seminar, SP 2025)

Russian 3750: [Alter]Native Russia: Indigenous Histories, Cultures, and Politics in Siberia and the North (GE: Foundations: Race, Ethnicity and Gender Diversity, in class, 3 cr., SP 2025)

Books

[under contract]: Arzyutov, Dmitry V. The Northern Book of Origin: Siberian Indigenous Narratives and Metropolitan Ethnogenesis Theories. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press. [Series: Critical Studies in the History of Anthropology Series]
 

Selected edited collections

Arzyutov, Dmitry V., Laura Siragusa, and Sarah C. Mortiz, eds. [in progress]. Of Those Who Know the Way: Indigenous and Local Companions and the Co-Production of Knowledge in the Circumpolar North.

Arzyutov, Dmitry V., Sergei A. Kan, Laura Siragusa, and Aleksander Pershai, eds. 2026 [in press]. Paper Bridges Between Franz Boas and Russian Anthropology. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press (with Preface by Regna Darnell and Epilogue by Igor Krupnik). [Series: The Franz Boas Papers: Documentary Edition, Vol. 3.] [publisher’s website]

Arzyutov, Dmitry V., Igor Krupnik, and Veronika Trotter, guest eds. 2025 [in press]. “Beyond Siberia: Transnational Histories of Indigenous Collections” Museum Anthropology

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. and Laura Siragusa, guest eds. 2024. “Ėpistoliarnye sviazi s polem i proizvodstvo antropologicheskogo znaniia” [= Letters from/to the Field and the Production of Anthropological Knowledge]. Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie. No. 190(6) [available online]

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. and Laura Siragusa, guest eds. 2024. “Ėpistoliarnye sviazi issledovateleĭ i proizvodstvo antropologicheskogo znaniia” [= Letters Between Researchers and the Production of Anthropological Knowledge]. Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie. No. 189(5) [available online]

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. and Karina Lukin, guest eds. 2023. “Entangled Indigenous Historicities from the Eurasian North.” Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society. 47(3) [available online]

Arzyutov, Dmitry V., David G. Anderson, and Svetlana V. Podrezova, eds. 2022. Puteshestviia cherez sibirskuiu step’ i taĭgu k antropologicheskim kontseptsiiam: ėtnoistoriia Sergeia i Elizavety Shirokogorovykh [= Journeys through the Siberian Steppes and Taiga to Anthropological Concepts: The Ethno-history of Sergei and Elizabeth Shirokogoroff]. In three volumes. Moscow: Indrik. [available online]

Anderson, David G., Dmitry V. Arzyutov, and Sergei S. Alymov, eds. 2019. Life Histories of Etnos Theory in Russia and Beyond. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers. (with Epilogue by Nathaniel Knight) [available online]

Arzyutov, Dmitry V., guest ed. 2017. “Beyond the Anthropological Texts: History and Theory of Fieldworking in the North”. Sibirica: Interdisciplinary Journal of Siberian Studies. 16(1) [journal’s website]Arzyutov, Dmitry V., Sergei S. Alymov, and David G. Anderson, eds. 2014. Ot klassikov k marksizmu: soveshchanie ėtnografov Moskvy i Leningrada (5–11 aprelia 1929 g.) [= From Classics to Marxism: The Meeting of Ethnographers from Moscow and Leningrad (5-11 April 1929)]. Vol. VII. Kunstkamera — Archives. St. Petersburg: MAE RAN [available online]
 

Major peer review articles and books chapters (last ten years)

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. [under review]. “Under the Shadow of a Mushroom Cloud: An Indigenous Nenets Hunter, the Tsar Bomba, and Multilayered Sovereignty on a Russian Arctic Archipelago.” In The Indigenous Citizenship Act at 100 [preliminary title]. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press.

Arzyutov, Dmitry V., and Laura Siragusa. [under review]. “When Siberian Indigenous Inscriptive Practices Meet Slavic and Eurasian Studies.” Slavic and East European Journal

Arzyutov, Dmitry V., Vera Solovieva, and Veronika Trotter. [forthcoming]. “Spinning the Past Forward: Recording, Archiving, and Listening to Siberian Phonograph Cylinders from the Jesup North Pacific Expedition” Museum Anthropology

Arzyutov, Dmitry V., Sergei A. Kan, and Laura Siragusa. 2026 [in press]. “The Boas Bridges to Russia: Building Anthropologies with Letters.” In Paper Bridges Between Franz Boas and Russian Anthropology, edited by Dmitry V. Arzyutov, Sergei A. Kan, Laura Siragusa, and Alexander Pershai. The Franz Boas Papers. Vol. 3. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press.

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. 2025 [forthcoming]. “Felting Indigenous Sovereignty: The Political Ecology of Ritual Rugs in Siberian Altai” Indigenous Heritage in Siberia: The Power of Objects, edited by Nadezhda Mamontova and Dmitry Oparin. London and New York: Bloomsbury

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. 2025. [forthcoming]. “Rooting in the Subterranean: Underground Dwellers in Northern Indigenous Narratives and Metropolitan Anthropological Theories.” Edited by Regna Darnell and Frederic W. Gleach. Recovering Ancestors in Anthropological Traditions, Histories of Anthropology Annual, 15

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. 2024. [forthcoming]. “More Than a Shaman: The Life History of An Altai Shepherd Surrounded by Sacred Mountains, Siberian Ethnographers, and Anthropological Ideas.” In Anthropology of Siberia in the Making: Openings and Closures from the 1840s to the Present, edited by Virginie Vaté and Joachim Otto Habeck. Vol. 50. Halle Studies in the Anthropology of Eurasia. Berlin, Münster: LIT Verlag.

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. and David G. Anderson. 2024. “Proxies and Partial Connections in an Anthropologist’s Archive.” The British Journal for the History of Science https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087424000815

Arzyutov, Dmitry V., Sergei A. Kan, and Laura Siragusa. 2024. “Res Publica Literaria Frantsa Boasa, ili kak postroitʹ transnatsionalʹnuiu antropologiiu s pomoshchʹiu pisem [= Franz Boas’ Res Publica Literaria, or How to Build Transnational Anthropology with Letters].” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, no. 189(5), 10–27. https://doi.org/10.53953/08696365_2024_189_5_10. [in Russian]

Siragusa, Laura, and Dmitri Arzioutov. 2024. « Rien ne se perd : du développement durable dans les pratiques des communautés autochtones du Nord russe. » Slavica Occitania, no. 58 (April), 301–24. [journal’s website] [in French]

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. 2024. “The Making of the Homo Polaris: Human Acclimatization to the Arctic Environment and Soviet Ideologies in Northern Medical Institutions.” Settler Colonial Studies 14 (2): 180–203. https://doi.org/10.1080/2201473X.2023.2274673.

Losey, Robert J., Tatiana Nomokonova, Dmitry V. Arzyutov, Andrei V. Gusev, Andrei V. Plekhanov, Natalia V. Fedorova, and David G. Anderson. 2021. “Domestication as Enskilment: Harnessing Reindeer in Arctic Siberia.” Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 28 (1): 197–231. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-020-09455-w.

Nomokonova, Tatiana, Robert J. Losey, Natalia V. Fedorova, Andrei V. Gusev, and Dmitry V. Arzyutov. 2021. “Reindeer Imagery in the Making at Ust’-Polui in Arctic Siberia.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 31 (1): 161–81. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774320000414.

Arzyutov, Dmitry V., and Lidia A. Danilina. 2020. “Ėtnografiia ėtnografa: Andreĭ Grigor’evich Danilin i ego arkhivy [= Ethnography of an Ethnographer: Andrei G. Danilin and His Archives].” Sibirskie istoricheskie issledovaniia, no. 4: 274–325. https://doi.org/10.17223/2312461X/30/14. [in Russian]

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. 2019. “Environmental Encounters: Woolly Mammoth, Indigenous Communities and Metropolitan Scientists in the Soviet Arctic.” Polar Record 55 (3): 142–53. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0032247419000299.

Anderson, David G., and Dmitry V. Arzyutov. 2019. “The Etnos Archipelago: Sergei M. Shirokogoroff and the Life History of a Controversial Anthropological Concept.” Current Anthropology 60 (6): 741–73. https://doi.org/10.1086/704685.

Alymov, Sergei S., David G. Anderson, and Dmitry V. Arzyutov. 2019. “Etnos-Thinking in the Long Twentieth Century.” In Life Histories of Etnos Theory in Russia and Beyond, edited by David G. Anderson, Dmitry V. Arzyutov, and Sergei S. Alymov, 21–75. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers. https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0150.02.

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. 2019. “Order Out of Chaos: Anthropology and Politics of Sergei M. Shirokogoroff.” In Life Histories of Etnos Theory in Russia and Beyond, edited by David G. Anderson, Dmitry V. Arzyutov, and Sergei S. Alymov, 251–93. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers. https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0150.06.

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. 2018. “Voices of the Land, Samizdat, and Visionary Politics: On the Social Life of Altai Narratives.” Anthropology & Archeology of Eurasia 57 (1): 38–81. https://doi.org/10.1080/10611959.2018.1470426.

Alymov, Sergei S., David G. Anderson, and Dmitry V. Arzyutov. 2018. “Life Histories of the Etnos Concept in Eurasia: An Introduction.” Ab Imperio 19 (1): 21–67. https://doi.org/10.1353/imp.2018.0002.

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. 2017. “Oleni i/ili benzin: ėsse ob obmenakh v severo-iamal’skoĭ tundre [= Reindeer and/or Petrol: An Essay on Exchanges in North Yamal Tundra]” In Sotsial'nye otnosheniia v istoriko-kul’turnom landshafte Sibiri, edited by Vladimir N. Davydov, 314-348. St. Petersburg: MAE RAN. [available online] [in Russian]

Arzyutov, Dmitry V., and Sergei A. Kan. 2017. “The Concept of the ‘Field’ in Early Soviet Ethnography: A Northern Perspective.” Sibirica: Interdisciplinary Journal of Siberian Studies. 16 (1): 31–74. https://doi.org/10.3167/sib.2017.160103.

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. 2016. “Samoyedic Diary: Early Years of Visual Anthropology in the Soviet Arctic.” Visual Anthropology. 2016. 29(4-5): 331-359 https://doi.org/10.1080/08949468.2016.1191927

Arzyutov, Dmitry V. 2016. “Shatra and Jurt: The ‘Return Address’ in Rituals of Altaians.” Archaeology, Anthropology and Ethnology of Eurasia 44 (3): 111–20. https://doi.org/10.17746/1563-0110.2016.44.3.111-120.

Anderson, David G., and Dmitry V. Arzyutov. 2016. “The Construction of the Soviet Ethnography and “The Peoples of Siberia.”” History and Anthropology. 2016. 27(2): 183-209. https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2016.1140159

Kan, Sergei, and Dmitry V. Arzyutov. 2016. “The Saga of The L.H. Morgan Archive, or How an American Marxist Helped Make a Bourgeois Anthropologist the Cornerstone of Soviet Ethnography.” Edited by Regna Darnell and Frederic W. Gleach. Local Knowledge, Global Stage, Histories of Anthropology Annual, 10: 149–220. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1dxg7dv.10.
 

Awards and major personal grants (as PI or co-PI)

2020: The 2019 Ab Imperio Award for the best peer-reviewed article in new imperial history and history of diversity in Northern Eurasia, up to the late twentieth century. For the article “The Etnos Archipelago: Sergei M. Shirokogoroff and the Life History of a Controversial Anthropological Concept.” [Anderson and Arzyutov 2019].

2017: The 2016 Best Research Article of Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera). For the article “Samoyedic Diary: Early Years of Visual Anthropology in the Soviet Arctic” [Arzyutov 2016].

2007: The 2007 Best Postgraduate Student of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Supported by Russian Science Support Foundation.

2024-2025: ASC Departmental Student Research Program Grants, the Ohio State University. Project title: The Right to Write: Documenting Minoritized Literatures and Cultures in Russia. (with Dr Philip Tuxbury-Gleissner)

2024: Center for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies at the Ohio State University (East European and Eurasian Online Curricular Module Development Program). Project title: Tales from Home: Two Siberians on Siberia’s History, Culture, and the Environment (with Michelle Verbitskaya)

2023-2025: The Modern Endangered Archives Program (MEAP) / UCLA Library granting program funded by Arcadia Fund (US). Project title: Siberian Voices. Voices of Pre-Industrial Siberia: The Collections of the Pushkin House (MEAP-3-0065) (with Dr. David Anderson, Aberdeen U, Scotland)

2010-2011: The Research Council of Norway (no. 202693). Project title: “Reviving Indigenous Tradition” in Altai: Sacred Places and Creating Social Networks.