Kotkin, Herbst win Guggenheim grants for year-long study

Two University professors were awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship grants last week. Stephen Kotkin, associate professor of history and Jeffrey Herbst '83, professor of politics and international affairs, are two of the 185 artists, scholars and scientists from the United States and Canada to receive the grant this year from a pool of 3,268 applicants, according to the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation's website.

"I am thrilled to get the Guggenheim. It's a magnificent award," Kotkin said.

Kotkin, who is also the director of the Russian studies program, has traveled seven times in the past decade through Siberia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia. During his travels, he has been working on a project on the history of the Ob river basin, which flows from Mongolia into the Arctic Ocean.

"[The Ob] is a colossal river, and I study its history from about 1300 to the present. There are different people [in the region]. There were already people there before the Russians came in and then the Russians folded them in," he said about his research interest, which explores the "layers of cultures and civilizations that we call Russia."

In addition to his research and travels, Kotkin teaches courses on the Soviet empire and nation building, as well as a freshman seminar this semester — "Moscow and Muscovy."

Kotkin will spend the next year as scholar in residence at the New York Public Library's Cullman Center. He will use the resources there to complete his book, "Loss in Siberia: Dream Worlds of Eurasia."

Herbst has been awarded the fellowship for studying "geography and the development of states," according to the Guggenheim Foundation's website. Herbst's area of expertise is sub-Saharan Africa.

"In my last book, 'States and Power in Africa,' I looked at certain questions of state consolidation using a lot of tools of political geography. With the fellowship next year, I want to apply some of the ideas and concepts of the previous book to other parts of the world," Herbst said.

Herbst differentiated between geopolitics and political geography. "Geopolitics implies politics of international relations. Political geography is how geography, [such as size and shape] affects the domestic politics. [This has a] major focus on developing countries," he said.

Herbst is the current chair of the politics department. He will be based in Princeton next year, though he will be on leave from the University and traveling. Nancy Bermeo will be the acting chair of the politics department in his absence.

The purpose of the Guggenheim Fellowships "is to help provide Fellows with blocks of time in which they can work with as much creative freedom as possible," according to the foundation's website.

Recommendations for awarding the grants are made by hundreds of advisors and then approved by the foundation's seven-member board of trustees. Joyce Carol Oates, professor of humanities in Princeton's creative writing program and past winner of the Guggenheim Fellowship, is one of the seven trustees.