Tyler Kirk

2012-2019
Ph.D., Arizona State University,
School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies, History.
Dissertation: “Remembering the GULAG: Community, Identity and Cultural Memory in Russia’s Far North, 1987- 2018.”

2009-2011
M.A., The University of Chicago, MAPSS, History.
Thesis: “Toward A Settled Past and a Brighter Future: The Creation of a ‘Usable Past’ in Modern Russia, 2000-2010.”

2010, 2012
Kathryn Davis School of Russian, Middlebury College.

2009
Komi State Pedagogical Institute (KGPI), Syktyvkar, Russia, Russian.

2006-2010
B.A., The University of Maine at Farmington, International Studies (magna cum laude).

• May 2023- Chair, Department of History, University of Alaska Fairbanks
• May 2020-July 2023 Assistant Director of Arctic and Northern Studies, University of Alaska Fairbanks
• Jan. 2020- Assistant Professor of History, University of Alaska Fairbanks
• July 2019-Aug. 2020 Research Scholar, Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
• 2016-Aug. 2019 Faculty Associate, History Unit, School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, Arizona State University

• In Press: After the Gulag: A History of Memory in Russia’s Far North, book manuscript in press with Indiana University Press, scheduled for publication December 2023.
• In Progress: “The Environmental History of the Gulag: A Case Study of the Russian Far North,” in progress for Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History.
• In Progress: “The Legacies of Russian Alaska, 1867-1949,” in progress for Slavic Review.
• 2023 “From Enemy to Hero: Andrei Krems and the Legacy of Stalinist Repression in Russia’s Far North, 1964-1982,” Russian Review, 2023: 1- 15.
• 2020 “‘Memory of Vorkuta’: A Gulag returnee’s Attempts at Autobiography and Art,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 21, 1 (Winter 2020): 97-126.
• 2018 “Iskusstvo K. P. Ivanova kak vospominanie o lagernoi zhizni (The Art of K. P. Ivanov As a Memoir of Camp Life)” in Revoliutsiia 1917 goda. Memorializatsiia, interpretatsiia, otrazhenie v kul’ture i iskusstve: materialy mezhregional’noi nauchno-prakticheskoi konferentsii (9-10 noiabria 2017 g., g. Syktyvkar) (Syktyvkar: Ministerstvo kul’tury, turizma i arkhivnogo dela Respubliki Komi, 2018).
• 2018 “Vozvrativshiesia iz GULAGa: pamiat’, istoriia, identichnost’ (Returned from the Gulag: Memory, History, and Identity).” Article co-authored with L. A. Maksimova (Syktyvkar State University), Vestnik-Humanities, 2017, Vol. 3, No. 4: 173-183.

• 2023 Alan Barenberg, Emily Johnson, eds., Rethinking the Gulag: Identities, Sources, Legacies in Canadian-American Slavic Studies 57, no. 1-2 (2023): 223-257.
• 2021 Jeffrey S. Hardy, The Gulag After Stalin: Redefining Punishment in Khrushchev’s Soviet Union, 1953-1964 in Canadian-American Slavic Studies 55 (2021): 101-103.
• 2019 Zuzanna Bogumił, Gulag Memories: The Rediscovery and Commemoration of Russia’s Repressive Past in Ab Imperio: Studies of New Imperial History and Nationalism in the Post-Soviet Space, 2/2019: 55-59.

• 2022 Fellow at the Summer Workshop on Authoritarianism and Democratic Breakdown, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, July 5-15, 2022.
• 2022 Spotlight on Teaching, University of Alaska Fairbanks, university-wide talk held Friday April 8, 2022.
• 2022 Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence Program for the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Applicant-Coordinator for visiting scholar Dr. Aleksandr Sergunin 2022-2023.
• 2019 Title VIII Research Scholarship, The Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
• 2019 Wallace E. Adams Memorial Award for Excellence in European History, School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (SHPRS).
• 2019 Michael A. Steiner Memorial Award for Best History Thesis in British or European History, School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (SHPRS).
• 2019 School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (SHPRS) Research Grant Spring 2019.
• 2018 School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (SHPRS) Research Grant Fall 2018.
• 2018-19 Center for Jewish Studies at Arizona State University; Great Students Fellowship.
• 2018 Arizona State University Graduate College Travel Grant.
• 2017-18 School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (SHPRS) Research Grant Fall/Winter 2017. 2017-18 Arizona State University Graduate College Completion Fellowship.
• 2016-17 Arizona State University College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; Graduate Excellence Award.
• 2016-17 J. William Fulbright U.S. Student Research Grant.
• 2016-17 Association for Slavic, East European & Eurasian Studies Tucker-Cohen Dissertation Research Fellowship (selected as alternate).
• 2015 Center for Jewish Studies at Arizona State University; Morris and Julia Kertzer Scholarship, Cabot Family Scholarship.
• 2015 Zoom Grant, Arizona State University Graduate and Professional Student Association.
• 2015 Summer Research Grant, School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (SHPRS), Arizona State University.
• 2015 Melikian Center: Russian, Eurasian and East European Studies at Arizona State University Doctoral Dissertation Research Development Fellowship.
• 2014 Melikian Center: Russian, Eurasian and East European Studies at Arizona State University Doctoral Dissertation Research Development Fellowship.
• 2012 Center for Jewish Studies at Arizona State University; Great Students Graduate Fellowship, Cabot Family Scholarship; Morris and Julia Kertzer Scholarship.
• 2009 Wilson Research Scholarship, the University of Maine at Farmington.

• April 2023 Op-Ed: “History Wars, Russian Style,” The Russia File: A Blog of the Kennan Institute, April 18, 2023.
• December 2022 “Brittney Griner’s release raises questions about lingering impact of Russian penal colony imprisonment,” Cronkite News Arizona PBS, December 8, 2022, 
• April 2022 “The Origins and Legacies of the Holocaust.” Invited lecture at Eielson Airforce Base, Fairbanks, AK April 28, 2022.
• March 2022 “Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: Historical Considerations and International Dimensions” a panel discussion with Tyler Kirk and Brandon Boylan, University of Alaska Fairbanks, March 3, 2022.
• March 2022 “‘Brother fighting brother.’ Talk explains how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine impacts Alaska.” KUAC, March 3, 2022.
• October 2021 Indiana University Russian Studies Workshop Fall 2021 Film Series: Kolyma: Road of Bones with Introduction and (virtual) Q&A by Prof. Tyler Kirk (University of Alaska Fairbanks), Oct. 14, 2021.
• March 2021 “German Soldier’s ID Found in Fairbanks Dumpster” interview for the Daily News-Miner with Linda F. Hersey, March 29, 2021.
• March 2021 “Memory and Landscape: Remembering Stalinist Repression in Russia's Far North, 1987-2020.” Invited lecture at the University of Washington, March 8, 2021.
• November 2020 “Remembering the Gulag: Who Will Write Its History?,” interview for Wilson Center NOW! with John Milewski, Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, Washington, D.C., Nov. 5, 2020.
• June 2020 “Remembering the Gulag: A History of Coming to Terms With the Past in Russia’s Far North, 1987-2020,” public webcast with William Pomerantz at the Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, Washington, D.C., Jun 30, 2020. Link.

• November 2023 “Imagining the Arctic: Monumental Landscapes and the Production of Space in Gulag Returnees’ Memoirs and Art.” To be presented at the 54th Annual Conference of the Association for Slavic, East European & Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), Philadelphia, PA, November 30-December 3, 2023.
• October 2023 “Decolonizing the Soviet North: Monumental Landscapes and the Production of Space in Gulag Returnees’ Autobiographies and Art.” To be presented at “Decolonizing the Global East” at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki Finland, October 25-27.
• November 2022 “Friendship and Survival: Gulag Returnees, Alternative Spaces, and Life on the Frontier.” Presented at the 53rd Annual Conference of the Association for Slavic, East European & Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), Chicago, IL, November 10-13, 2022.
• November 2021 “The Local History of Political Repression: Gulag returnees, Kraevedy, and the Memorial Society in the Far North.” Presented at the 52nd Annual Conference of the Association for Slavic, East European & Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), New Orleans, LA, November 18, 2021.
• August 2021 “Cultural Tension and Community Building in the Gulag and After Release: A Case Study.” Presented at the 10th World Congress of the International Council for Central and East European Studies at Concordia University, Montreal, CA, August 3, 2021.
• November 2019 “Rehabilitation, Reintegration, and Memory: The Apartment-Museum of Andrei Krems.” Presented at the 51st Annual Conference of the Association for Slavic, East European & Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), San Francisco, CA, November 24, 2019.
• December 2018 “Illustrating Life in the Gulag: K. P. Ivanov, Memory, and Identity in the Komi ASSR: 1983-1999.” Presented at the 50th Annual Conference of the Association for Slavic, East European & Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), Boston, MA, December 8, 2018.
• November 2018 “Letters to Syktyvkar Memorial and the Making of a New Archive: ‘Who will remember if I forget?’” Presented at the Annual Conference of the Social Science History Association (SSHA), Phoenix, AZ, November 9, 2018.
• September 2018 “‘Who will remember if I forget?’: Gulag Returnees Write to Syktyvkar Memorial, 1989-2002.” Presented at “Regimes and Societies in Conflict: Eastern Europe and Russia Since 1956,” at the University of Uppsala, Sweden, September 13, 2018.
• February 2018 “Life After the Gulag: Artist K. P. Ivanov, Autobiographical Writing, Identity, and Art After the Collapse of the Soviet Union, 1983-1998.” Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Desert Russian Historian’s Workshop at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, February 24, 2018.
• November 2017 “The Art of K. P. Ivanov As a Memoir of Camp Life (Isskustvo K. P. Ivanova kak vospominanie o lagernoi zhizni).” Presented in Russian via Skype at “The 1917 Revolution: Memorialization, Interpretation, and Reflection in Culture and Art” at the National Gallery of the Komi Republic, Syktyvkar, Russia, November 9, 2017.
• March 2017 “Historical Memory of the Gulag in the Memoirs of Former Prisoners in Komi (Istoricheskaia pamiat’ o GULAGe v vospominaniiakh byvshikh zakliuchennykh v Komi).” Presented in Russian at the “All-Russian Scientific Student and Graduate Student Conference ‘Problems of the History of Material and Spiritual Culture of the Peoples of Russia and Foreign Countries,” Syktyvkar, Russia, March 24, 2017.
• January 2017 “Life After Gulag: Impressions, Questions, and Life in Syktyvkar.” Presented at “Fulbright Program in Russia Mid-Year Seminar,” Moscow, Russia, January 25, 2017.
• September 2015 “Gulag Returnees and Memory in Post-Soviet Russia.” Presented at “The Carceral Archipelago: Transnational Circulations in Global Perspective, 1415-1960,” CArchipelago Project, University of Leicester, UK, September 16, 2015.
• March 2015 “Gulag Returnees, Memory, and Regional Identity in Post-Soviet Russia: The Komi Memorial Archive.” Presented at “Centrifugal Forces: Reading Russia’s Regional Identities and Initiatives,” University of Virginia, March 28, 2015.

• Summer 2022
  • Palo Alto, CA: The Hoover Institution Library and Archives at Stanford University.
• Postponed
  • Komi Republic, Russia: National Archive of the Komi Republic (NARK), Fond “Pokaianie”, National Library of the Komi Republic (NBRK), National Museum of the Komi Republic, National Gallery of the Komi Republic.
• Summer 2021
  • Komi Republic, Russia: Fond Pokaianie, Syktyvkar, Russia (virtual); oral history interviews (virtual).
• Summer 2020
  • Washington, DC: Library of Congress, United States Holocaust Museum
• Summer-Fall 2019
  • Washington, DC: Library of Congress, United States Holocaust Museum.
• Fall-Summer 2016-17
  • Syktyvkar, Russia: National Archive of the Komi Republic (NARK), Fond “Pokaianie”, National Library of the Komi Republic (NBRK), National Museum of the Komi Republic, National Gallery of the Komi Republic.
  • Vorkuta, Russia: Vorkuta Museum-Exhibition Center, Vorkuta Geological Museum.
  • Ukhta, Russia: Local History Museum of Ukhta State Technical University, Ukhta Local History Museum, Apartment Museum of A. Ia. Krems.
  • Moscow, Russia: Archive of the History of Political Repression (1918- 1956), Archive of Memoirs and Literary Works, International Memorial Society.
• Spring 2016
  • Palo Alto, CA: The Hoover Institution Library and Archives at Stanford University.
• Spring 2015
  • Palo Alto, CA: The Hoover Institution at Stanford University (State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF).
• June 2013
  • Syktyvkar, Russia: National Archive of the Komi Republic (NARK), National Library of the Komi Republic (NBRK), Fond “Pokaianie.”
  • Moscow, Russia: State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), International Memorial Society.

Courses taught

Spring 2024

• HIST F 466/ACNS F666: The Russian Arctic, University of Alaska Fairbanks, hybrid. 
• HIST F316: Europe Since 1945, University of Alaska Fairbanks, online.

Fall 2023

• HIST F315: Europe, 1900-1945, University of Alaska Fairbanks, online.
• ACNS F484/600: Perspectives on the North, University of Alaska Fairbanks, online and face-to-face.

Summer 2023

• HIST F102: Western Civilization II, University of Alaska Fairbanks, online.
• HIST F464/ACNS F664 UX1: Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia, University of Alaska Fairbanks, online.

Spring 2023

• HIST F464/ACNS F664 UX1: Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia, University of Alaska Fairbanks in-person and online.
• HIST F316 UX1: Europe Since 1945, University of Alaska Fairbanks, online.

Fall 2022

• ACNS F484/600: Perspectives on the North, University of Alaska Fairbanks, hybrid.
• HIST F315: Europe, 1900-1945, University of Alaska Fairbanks, online.

Summer 2022

• HIST F464/ACNS F664 UX1: Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia, University of Alaska Fairbanks online.

Spring 2022

• HIST F434: Special Topics in History: The Russian Arctic, University of Alaska Fairbanks, hybrid.
• HIST F404/ACNS 604: Modern Scandinavia, University of Alaska Fairbanks, online.

Fall 2021

• HIST F316: Europe Since 1945, University of Alaska Fairbanks, online.
• ACNS F484/600: Perspectives on the North, University of Alaska Fairbanks, hybrid.

Spring 2021

• HIST F464/ACNS 664: Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia, University of Alaska Fairbanks, online.
• HIST F315: Europe, 1900-1945, University of Alaska Fairbanks, online.

Fall 2020

• ACNS F484/600: Perspectives on the North, University of Alaska Fairbanks, hybrid.
• HIST F434: Conquest of the Russian North, University of Alaska Fairbanks, hybrid.

Spring 2020

• HIST F102: Western Civilization II, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
• HIST F316: Europe Since 1945, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
• HIST F464/ACNS 664: Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia, University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Summer 2019

• HST 101: Global History Since 1500 Arizona State University, Online.
• HST 100: Global History to 1500, Arizona State University, Online.

Fall 2018

• HST 436: The Soviet Experiment, Arizona State University.

Spring 2016

• HST 304: A Survey of Soviet History, Arizona State University.

Fall 2015

• HST 101: Global History Since 1500, Arizona State University.

Summer 2015

• HST 304: A Survey of Soviet History, Arizona State University, Online.

Spring 2015

• HST 101/SGS 111: Global History Since 1500, Arizona State University.

• 2023- Chair, Department of History, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
• 2023-2024 Faculty Mentor, Association for Slavic, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) Mentoring Program.
• 2022-2023 Curriculum Advisory Committee, Faculty Senate, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
• Spring 2022 Faculty Initiative Fund Review Committee, Faculty Senate, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
• Summer 2022 Re-Envisioning CLA Summit, College of Liberal Arts, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
• July 20-22, 2021 Re-Envisioning CLA Summit, College of Liberal Arts, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
• 2021-2023 Alternate Senator for Social Sciences, Faculty Senate, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
• 2020-2023 Assistant Director of Arctic and Northern Studies, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
• 2020- Honors Faculty Advisory Committee.
• 2020- History Curriculum Advisory Committee, University of Alaska Fairbanks.
• 2020- Judge for Fairbanks History Day.
• 2018 Referee for journal article in Aspasia, a yearbook of women's and gender history of Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe (CESEE).
• 2018 History Honors Contract Advisor (HST 436: The Soviet Experiment), Arizona State University.
• 2016 History Honors Contract Advisor (HST 304: A Survey of Soviet History), Arizona State University.
• 2015-2016 Vice President, History Graduate Student Association, Arizona State University.

• Heather Nice, INDS Ph.D., Co-Chair
• Leanna Prax-Williams, INDS Ph.D. in Arctic and Northern Studies, Member
• Kristine Swain, INDS Ph.D. in Arctic and Northern Studies, Member
• Mollie Messick, INDS Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics and Arctic and Northern Studies, Member

 

• Cameron Kovarek, M.A. in Arctic and Northern Studies, Chair
• Samantha Teixeira, M.A. in Arctic and Northern Studies, Chair
• Elizabeth Williams, M.A. in Arctic and Northern Studies, Member
• Brooke Barton, M.A. in Linguistic Anthropology, Member