Amber Lee Silva, PhD candidate, Anthropology
amberleesilva [at] gmail.com (Email)
Project Title:聽The Selective Modernity of a Global Enclave: The Religious Segregation of the Russian Old Believer Diaspora
Project Description: Fieldwork for my dissertation will take place in Erie, Pennsylvania and Nikolaevsk, Alaska with communnities of Russian Old Believers (Staroveri). My primary research question asks how can a group be both an ethno-religious, isolated enclave locally and a transnational diasporic network globally? Broadly, I look at both methods of forging and maintaining social disconnections and connections. Specifically, disconnections include internal (popovtsy=priestly/bezpopovtsy=priestless) and external (Staroveri=Old Believers/mirsky=worldly and poganyi=unclean) divisions and the purity rituals and taboos that separate them. Connections include intradiasporic networking through communication, textual exchange, transnational endogamy, and travel.
Research Interests:聽Russian Orthodoxy, Anabaptism, self-segregation, religious enclaves, purity and pollution, diaspora, migration
Geographic Focus:聽Eastern Europe, North America
Main Supervisor: Dr. Ronald Niezan
Previous Education:
B.A. in Anthropology and Archaeology from SUNY Potsdam
Masters in Anthropology from 平特五不中