Kenai Peninsula history conference

Andrei Znamenski

has studied history and anthropology both in Russia and the United States. His major interests include Native people and religions of Alaska and Siberia. His first book, Shamanism and Christianity (1999) explores indigenous responses to 19th-century Russian Orthodox missionaries.  A follow-up project, Through Orthodox Eyes (2003), translates the journals of Kenai area missionaries who worked among the Dena’ina in south-central Alaska.  His other books are The Beauty of the Primitive: Shamanism and Western Imagination (2007), Red Shambhala (2011), and two anthologies he edited.  Znamenski has lived and traveled extensively in Siberia, Alaska, northern Europe, and Japan, and was the keynote speaker at the 2009 annual meeting of the Alaska Historical Society. Formerly a resident scholar at the Library of Congress, then a foreign visiting professor at Hokkaido University, Japan, he is currently Professor of History at the University of Memphis.