Publication Type: Works in Progress
Abstract: Most of the world’s ethnic Tatars live in Tatarstan, a former Soviet Republic and an autonomous state in Russia today. Once an independent Muslim nation, Tatarstan was conquered by the Russian Tsar, Ivan IV (a.k.a. “Ivan the Terrible”) in 1552. For centuries, the relationship between Russians and Tatars has been complex. The collapse of the former Soviet Union introduced a new dynamic into Russian-Tatar relations. The possibility for Russian Tatars to travel aboard, to meet members of the Tatar Diaspora, and to observe the rights that ethnic minorities enjoy overseas resulted in a strong desire among Russian Tatars, those living in Russia and abroad, to revise their political, socioeconomic and cultural status within Russia.

In this study, I will examine how Russian Tatars living in the United States define, communicate, and maintain their ethnic identity. As my research data, I will use messages posted on an online forum Tatar USA between January 2005 and 2006. The Tatar USA forum is part of the Tatars in America website (www.tatar-usa.org), created by a group of young Russian Tatars who arrived in the United States as students or employees within the last ten years and have been living in America since then.

By employing grounded theory in my study of ethnic identity among Russian Tatars living in the United States – participants of the online forum Tatar USA – I hope to identify a central descriptive narrative of the Tatar ethnic identity, as it is expressed, communicated, and maintained by the forum participants.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In this study I identify factors that predict the formation of territorial autonomy arrangements for regionally-concentrated ethnic communities. While an extensive literature has investigated the capacity of autonomy arrangements to manage interethnic di

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Almost two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, ethnic Volga Tatars continue to grapple with the issues related to their ethnic identity. This paper examines how ethnic Volga Tatars currently living in the United States negotiate their ethnic identity through stance-taking in an online-forum discussion on Islam. By employing a socio-cultural linguistic approach to language, identity, and stance-taking and by utilizing as my analytical tools Goffman’s (1981) theory of footing (with the emphasis on production formats) and Bakhtin’s (1981) notions of heteroglossia, double-voicing, and codeswitching, I will demonstrate how Tatars’ multiple stances toward Islam reflect their complex social history as Russia’s ethnic minority and America’s recent immigrants and sojourners. I propose that the varying degrees of loyalty that the forum members display toward Islam signal a non-monolithic nature of their ethnic identity.