
Serkan Yolacan
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Bio
Serkan Yolaçan’s research broadly focuses on the interplay of past and present in the lives of individuals, diasporas, and states. In all his projects, Yolaçan combines broad space and deep history empirically, and history and anthropology methodologically, to generate geo-historical frames that speak to questions of human mobility, political order, and social change.
His book project, Time Travelers of Baku: Conversion and Revolution in West Asia, weaves the modern experiences of Turkey, Iran, and Russia through the lens of a diasporic people from the region of Azerbaijan. In this work, Yolaçan reveals the Azeris’ deep historical roots within each country and shows how shared pasts allow for the cross-pollination of ideas among neighboring realms, languages, and even religions, especially in times of opening or crisis. By placing mobile Azeris at the center of three major states, he ties together their near-synchronous transformations from constitutional revolutions at the beginning of the twentieth century to expansionist agendas in the twenty-first.
Yolaçan’s second project is a comparative study of millennial and messianic movements. It explores how embodied authority, eschatological beliefs, and textual traditions interact to create invisible forms of sovereignty.
He is also part of a collaborative project that opens a new inquiry in political anthropology by studying two ubiquitous figures of the 21st century: strongman and informal diplomat. By shifting the basis of understanding their partnership from bureaucracies to networks, law to trust, and protocols to rituals, the project renders these opaque figures legible to ethnographic and historical inquiry while offering new methodological approaches to the study of populism, authoritarianism, diplomacy, and internationalism.
Academic Appointments
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Assistant Professor, Anthropology
Professional Education
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PhD, Duke University, Cultural Anthropology (2017)
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MA, Central European University, Sociology and Social Anthropology (2008)
Current Research and Scholarly Interests
Serkan Yolaçan’s research broadly focuses on the interplay of past and present in the lives of individuals, diasporas, and states. In all his projects, Yolaçan combines broad space and deep history empirically, and history and anthropology methodologically, to generate geo-historical frames that speak to questions of human mobility, international order, and state expansionism, past and present.
His book project, Time Travelers of Baku: Conversion and Revolution in West Asia, weaves the modern experiences of Turkey, Iran, and Russia through the lens of a mobile, diasporic people from the region of Azerbaijan. In this work, Yolaçan reveals the Azeris’ deep historical roots within each country and shows how shared pasts allow for the cross-pollination of ideas among neighboring realms, languages, and even religions, especially in times of opening or crisis. By placing mobile Azeris at the center of three major states, he ties together their near-synchronous transformations from constitutional revolutions at the beginning of the twentieth century to expansionist agendas in the twenty-first.
Yolaçan’s second project is a comparative study of cults and messianic movements. It explores how embodied authority, eschatological beliefs, and textual traditions interact to create invisible forms of sovereignty.
A side project he works on opens a new inquiry in political anthropology by studying two ubiquitous figures of the 21st-century: strongman and informal diplomat. Populists at home and maverick dealmakers abroad, strongman leaders are side-lining official career diplomats by using informal diplomats, drawn from transnational networks of diasporas, religious communities, and merchants. By shifting the basis of understanding their partnership from bureaucracies to networks, law to trust, and protocols to rituals, he renders these opaque figures legible to ethnographic and historical inquiry while offering new methodological approaches to the study of populism, authoritarianism, diplomacy, and internationalism.
2023-24 Courses
- Anthropological Research Methods
ANTHRO 306 (Win) -
Independent Studies (10)
- Directed Individual Study
ANTHRO 451 (Aut, Win, Spr) - Graduate Internship
ANTHRO 452 (Aut, Win, Spr) - Graduate Teaching
ANTHRO 440 (Aut, Win, Spr) - Independent Study for Honors or Senior Paper Writing
ANTHRO 95B (Aut, Win, Spr) - Internship in Anthropology
ANTHRO 97 (Aut, Win, Spr) - Master's Project
ANTHRO 441 (Aut, Win, Spr) - Qualifying Examination: Area
ANTHRO 401B (Aut, Win, Spr) - Qualifying Examination: Topic
ANTHRO 401A (Aut, Win, Spr) - Research Apprenticeship
ANTHRO 450 (Aut, Win, Spr) - Research in Anthropology
ANTHRO 95 (Aut, Win, Spr)
- Directed Individual Study
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Prior Year Courses
2022-23 Courses
- Anthropological Research Methods
ANTHRO 306 (Win) - Cults: Mystics and Messiahs in a Modern World
ANTHRO 102 (Win) - Time Travel: Pasts, Places, and Possibilities
ANTHRO 312 (Aut)
2021-22 Courses
- Cults: Mystics and Messiahs in a Modern World
ANTHRO 102 (Win) - Empires and Diasporas
ANTHRO 147, ANTHRO 247 (Spr) - Time Travel: Pasts, Places, and Possibilities
ANTHRO 312 (Aut)
2020-21 Courses
- Mystics and Messiahs: Explorations in Cult Movements
ANTHRO 102 (Sum) - Time Travel: Pasts, Places, and Possibilities
ANTHRO 312 (Win) - Transregionalism
ANTHRO 147, ANTHRO 247 (Spr)
- Anthropological Research Methods
Stanford Advisees
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Doctoral Dissertation Reader (AC)
Miray Cakiroglu -
Master's Program Advisor
Jonas Tai -
Doctoral (Program)
Ronald Chen, Poornima Rajeshwar, Mahder Teshome
All Publications
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Iron fist or nimble fingers?: An anatomy of Erdogan's strongman politics
HISTORY AND ANTHROPOLOGY
2021
View details for DOI 10.1080/02757206.2021.1946048
View details for Web of Science ID 000675101200001
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Strongmen and informal diplomats: Toward an anthropology of international relations
HISTORY AND ANTHROPOLOGY
2021
View details for DOI 10.1080/02757206.2021.1946050
View details for Web of Science ID 000668780600001
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Azeri networks through thick and thin: West Asian politics from a diasporic eye
Journal of Eurasian Studies
2019; 10 (1): 36-47
View details for DOI 10.1177/1879366518814936
- The Idea of the Northern Tier: A New Order in the Middle East? edited by Yolaçan, S. NUS Middle East Institute. 2019