Ethnographic Sketches
For this assignment we will be working with a 4 volume account of the multiethnic population of the Russian Empire published in 1776-1780 (in German and in French and in Russian, and in English 1780-1783) by Johann Gottlieb Georgi. The full text is available via HOLLIS (you must be logged in). Click here to go to the HOLLIS record.
In class you will select an ethnic group described by Georgi and represented in the collection of images digitized by the New York Public Library.
Your first task is to read the relevant portion of Georgi's text, study the image, and create a bibliography of historical sources one might use to research the ethnic group you have selected.
Add each source (primary or secondary) to the Zotero Library.
- Be sure that all appropriate metadata fields are filled in.
- Assign each source the tag "YourFirstNameAndLastInitial".
- Assign each source the tag "ethnographic sketches".
- Assign each source one of the following tags: "accessible in digital format only" "accessible in print format only" or "accessible in digital and print formats".
- Add a brief note (in the "Notes" column) indicating the contents or suggesting the use to which a researcher might put each source. Note that in order to do this, you will need to have at least skimmed the source.
Target number of sources: 4
Your second task is to compose an essay that answers (in no particular order) the following questions about the ethnic group you have researched:
- Who were they?
- Where were they?
- What role did they play in tsarist history? (Our focus here is on the 18th century.)
- Where did they fit in Georgi's classification scheme?
- What do we learn from the image itself?
Refer to the guidelines for written work on the syllabus.
Essay length: 1,500 words.
Upload to Canvas and post on Omeka.
