I had Julie Fairbanks as my anthropology professor back in the 20-teens; I was actually the first student at Coe to graduate with an Anthropology minor. I ended up on this site while procrastinating in the last week or so of my PhD thesis (I'm in my thirties now and haven't changed a bit), and thought I'd share my experience. Julie wasn't my advisor when I was at Coe, but she felt like a graduate supervisor. I was the only anthropology student, so most of my upper-level classes were one-to-one, and she was the one who first encouraged me to present my original research at the CSAS conference in St. Louis. As a kid who was used to being an academic troublemaker--I actually graduated high school late--her guidance laid so much of the groundwork for my future academic career. She was encouraging and she believed in me, and now, over a decade later, I'm a couple months away from my PhD at one of the leading universities in the world. I ended up pursuing Creative Writing, but loads of my work is based in anthropology and I still use the methods I learned way back when. Thanks, Julie, for everything.
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Julie Fairbanks is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Coe College, where she also serves as the Administrative Coordinator for the Anthropology Program. She is profiled among faculty in both the Anthropology and Sociology departments. She earned her B.S. from Georgetown University, M.A. from Harvard University, and Ph.D. from Indiana University. Dr. Fairbanks began her academic career at Coe College as an ACM-Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow for two years, after which she transitioned into a tenure-track position and advanced to her current associate professorship.
Dr. Fairbanks focuses her research on the ways that people display and maintain their identities, particularly examining performance and memory in the Caucasus region of Russia, as well as the history of ethnography in this region. Her publications include "Engaged with the Caucasus: Life and Work of Leonid Ivanovich Lavrov" and a book review of "Rites of Place: Public Commemoration in Russia and Eastern Europe," edited by Julie Buckler and Emily D. Johnson (Northwestern University Press, 2013), published in the Anthropology of East Europe Review 32(1), Spring 2014, pages 79-80. She has presented her research at scholarly conferences, including the Central States Anthropological Society on topics such as "Images of Tradition: Soviet Ethnographic Literature," the Soviet project of mastering USSR territory, and "Space and Place-Making in Greater Sochi, Russia" at ASEEES. Dr. Fairbanks teaches introductory courses, methods and theory courses in anthropology, along with classes on globalization, food, performance, memory, and Russia. She engages students in applied ethnographic work, including community projects related to the environment and homelessness; for instance, students in her Ethnographic Methods class researched factors leading to homelessness in Cedar Rapids, presented at the 2017 Student Research Symposium. Additionally, she delivers public lectures through Coe College's Thursday Forum series, such as the 2023 two-week "Perspectives on Russia," providing an overview of the Caucasus region and its nuanced relationships to the Russia-Ukraine war from perspectives within Russia and neighboring areas.
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