Professor, Sociocultural Anthropology / Program on International and Area Studies, Washington University
Wertsch and Luria
My work is concerned with collective memory and identity. I have particular interests in how these issues play out in Russia , the Republic of Georgia , and Estonia , but my research is also motivated by a broader set of concerns about the nature of collective memory in general. In previous writings I have drawn on the ideas of L.S. Vygotsky, M.M. Bakhtin, and others in order to examine problems of language and thought from a sociocultural perspective.
I am currently working on several projects in the South Caucasus , especially the Republic of Georgia . This includes collaborating with colleagues on efforts to understand the emergence of civil society, and democracy in this region. Of particular interest for me is how schools and other institutions are harnessed to create and maintain official collective memory.
In addition to Anthropology, I am associated with the Department of Education, the International and Area Studies Program, and the Department of Psychology. I am also Director of the McDonnell International Scholars Academy and Vice Chancellor for International Relations at Washington University .
Excerpted from: http://anthropology.artsci.wustl.edu/wertsch_james
Selected Publications
- Freedom and Constraint in Human Action
Jim Wertsch
- Enough! The Rose Revolution in the Republic of Georgia (Karumidze & Wertsch, eds., 2005)
- The Architecture and Dynamics of Intersubjectivity in Science Classrooms (Mortimer & Wertsch, 2003)
- The future of the past. CaucasUS Context, no.1, pp.109-116 (Wertsch, 2003)
- Voices of collective remembering (Wertsch, 2002)
- Narratives as cultural tools in sociocultural analysis: Official history in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia (Wertsch, 2001)
- Mind as action (Wertsch, 1998)
- Voices of the mind: A sociocultural approach to mediated action (Wertsch, 1991)
- Collective Memory: Issues from a Sociohistorical Perspective (Wertsch, 1987)
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