Robert J. Kaiser
Professor of Geography
Education
PhD (Geography), Columbia University, May 1988
Research Areas
Geography of nationalism; cultural politics of memory; politics of scale; power, place and identity; border studies; post-socialist space.
Current Research
Rescaling and Reterritorializing Place and Identity in the Post-Socialist Borderlands.Cultural Politics of Memory: Re-imagining the Past, Reclaiming the Future in the Estonian-Russian Borderlands
Courses Taught
Geography 101: Introduction to Human Geography: Global Patterns and Processes
Geography 318: Geography, Politics and Territoriality.
Geography 353: Geographies of Transition in Post-Socialist Space.
Geography 553: Eastern Europe and the FSU: Problems in Human Geography.
Geography 918: Seminar in Political Geography: The Geography of Nationalism.
Selected Publications
Books
Borders in Post-Socialist Europe, co-authored with Tassilo Herschel and Dmitry Zimin, Aldershot: Ashgate, forthcoming.
The Russians as the New Minority in the Soviet Successor States, co-authored with Jeff Chinn. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996.
The Geography of Nationalism in Russia and the USSR. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994.
Articles and Book Chapters
"Homeland Making and the Territorialization of National Identity." In Ethnonationalism in the Contemporary World, edited by Daniele Conversi. London and NY: Routledge, 2002.
"Geography," The Encyclopedia of Nationalism, volume 1, pp. 315-33. San Diego: Academic Press, 2001.
"Political Geography and Nationalism in Late Imperial Russia." In Istoriya Natsional’nykh Politicheskikh Partii Rossii, edited by A. Zevelev, pp. 65-82. Moskva: Rosspen, 1997.
"Nationalism and Identity." In Geography and Transition in the Post-Soviet Republics, edited by Michael Bradshaw, pp. 9-30. Chichester and New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997.
"Czechoslovakia: The Disintegration of a Binational State." In Federalism. The Multiethnic Challenge, edited by Graham Smith, pp. 208-236. London: Longman, 1995.
"Prospects for the Disintegration of the Russian Federation," Post-Soviet Geography 36 (September 1995): 426-435.
"Russian-Kazakh Relations in Kazakhstan," Post-Soviet Geography 36 (May 1995): 257- 273.
"Nationalizing the Work Force: Ethnic Restratification in the Newly Independent States," Post-Soviet Geography 36 (February 1995): 87-111.
"Ethnic Demography and Interstate Relations in Central Asia." In National Identity and Ethnicity in Russia and the New States of Eurasia, volume 2 of the series "The International Politics of Eurasia". Edited by Roman Szporluk, pp. 230-265. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1994.
Graduate Students
Ph.D
Kimberly Coulter. Visions of "Unity in Diversity": Territorial Appeals in Contemporary German Filmmaking. 2007 PhD
Alexander Diener. One Homeland or Two?: Territorialization of Identity and the Repatriation Decision of the Mongolian-Kazakh Diaspora. 2003 PhD
Reece Jones. Admitted to PhD program Fall 2004.
Adam Moore. Admitted to PhD program Fall 2003.
Karie Pieczynski-Tayfun. Admitted to PhD program Fall 2003.
Masters
Shonin Anacker. Star of the Steppe: Geographies of Power in Astana. 2004 MA (CREECA)
Paul Dziemela. The Census and the Institutionalization of Border Identities: A Reevaluation of "Local" Identity in Interwar Polish Censuses. 1999 MS (Geography)
Reece Jones. Religion and Homeland in Bengal: A Territorial Interpretation of Religious Nationalism. 2004 MS (Geography)
Christopher Luebke. ASEAN and Displacement: The Politics of Scale across the Thai-Myanmar Border.
Karie Pieczynski. The Voice of the Aul: Symbolic Sovereignty and National Consciousness at the Local Scale. 2003 MA (CREECA)
Matthew Springer. Geopolitical Representations of Iran in the United States since the Hostage Crisis: The Effect of Negative Imagery on America's Caspian Basin Energy Policy. 2003 MS (Geography)
Damian Wampler. Religion, Place and Scale in Central Asia.
Roberta Charpentier. Admitted to MS program Fall 2003.
Other Activities
Principal investigator, NSF-funded project to Build an International Collaborative Network of Geographers and Related Specialists: the US and the Southern Tier of Post-Socialist States), August 2002 to Present http://www.geography.wisc.edu/RCEEEweb/nsf).
Director, Center for Russia, East Europe and Central Asia (CREECA), University of Wisconsin-Madison, Fall 2001 to Summer 2004.
Chair, Russia, Central Eurasia and Eastern Europe (RCEEE) Specialty Group, Association of American Geographers, July 2000 to April 2003.
Contact Information
Mailing Address:
Department of Geography
University of Wisconsin-Madison
430 Science Hall
550 North Park Street
Madison, Wisconsin 53706-1404 USA
Phone: (608) 262-4438