Sergei Kan

Sergei A. Kan is an American anthropologist known for his research with and writings on the Tlingit people of southeast Alaska, focusing on the potlatch and on the role of the Russian Orthodox church in Tlingit communities.

Kan is of Russian Jewish origin and came to the U.S. in 1974. He did undergraduate studies at Boston University and received his master's and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago, where he was a student of the anthropologist Raymond D. Fogelson and also cites the influence of Nancy Munn, George W. Stocking, Jr., and John and Jean Comaroff.

He began fieldwork with the Tlingit in Sitka, Alaska, in 1979 and in 1980 was adopted by Charlotte Young (Tlaktoowú) (1916-1982) into the Kaagwaantaan clan. In 1991, he was adopted by Mark Jacobs into the Tlingit Dakl'aweidí clan.

He was an associate professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan before going to Dartmouth College where he was granted tenure in 1993.

Bibliography

* Kan, Sergei (1983) "Words That Heal the Soul: Analysis of the Tlingit Potlatch Oratory." "Arctic Anthropology," vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 47-59.

* Kan, Sergei (1985) "Russian Orthodox Brotherhoods among the Tlingit: Missionary Goals and Native Response." "Ethnohistory," vol. 32, no. 3, pp. 196-223.

* Kan, Sergei (1986) "The Nineteenth-Century Tlingit Potlatch: A New Perspective." "American Ethnologist," vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 191-212.

* Kan, Sergei (1989) "Cohorts, Generations, and Their Culture: The Tlingit Potlatch in the 1980s." "Anthropos," vol. 84, nos. 4-6.

* Kan, Sergei (1989) "Symbolic Immortality: The Tlingit Potlatch of the Nineteenth Century." Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.

* Kan, Sergei (1991) "Russian Orthodox Missionaries and the Tlingit Indians of Alaska, 1880-1890. In: "New Dimensions in Ethnohistory," ed. by B. M. Gough and L. Christie, pp. 127-160. Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Civilization.

* Kan, Sergei (1991) "Shamanism and Christianity: Modern-Day Tlingit Elders Look at the Past." "Ethnohistory," vol. 38, no. 4, pp. 363-387.

* Kan, Sergei (1996) "Clan Mothers to Godmothers: Tlingit Women and Russian Orthodox Christianity, 1840-1940." "Ethnohistory," vol. 43, no. 4, pp. 613-641.

* Kan, Sergei (1999) "Memory Eternal: Tlingit Culture and Russian Orthodox Christianity through Two Centuries." Seattle: University of Washington Press.

* Kan, Sergei (2001) "Friendship, Family, and Fieldwork: One Anthropologist's Adoption by Two Tlingit Families." In: "Strangers to Relatives: The Adoption and Naming of Anthropologists in Native North America," ed. by Sergei Kan, pp. 185-217. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.