Professional Background:

BA, Cultural Anthropology and Russian Studies, Macalester College, 2006

Entered Program 2009

UNC FLAS Fellow for Russian Studies 2009-2010
NSF Graduate Research Fellow 2010-

Research & Activities:

My primary research considers disability advocacy, in particular movements for inclusive education and accessibility in public space, as indicative of citizenship practices in contemporary Russia.  At the core of this investigation are questions of normalcy and inclusion, as specters haunting modernity and democracy.

A multi-sited ethnography, my project examines the changing field of education for special needs children in Petrozavodsk (a regional capital city in Northwest Russia), and various disability activist strategies in and around Ulan Ude (a regional capital city near Lake Baikal and Mongolia).  In doing so, I interrogate models of civil society, in(ter)dependence, and the interplay of local, regional, national and international players in a post-Soviet environment.

Previous research considered motherhood, gender, and disability advocacy in rural Buryatia.

Generally, as a medical anthropologist, I situate my research at a scantly populated crossroads of Disability Studies, Post-Soviet Studies, and Queer Studies. I am also developing new work, informed by performance studies, that blends artistic and ethnographic practice to result in what I am calling ethnographic installations.

Selected Publications:

Hartblay, Cassandra and Galina Ailchieva. "Raising kids without complexes": successes and shortcomings in implementing inclusive education in Northern Kyrgyzstan. In (untitled), Martyn Rouse, ed., Central European University Press: n.d. In progress.

Hartblay, Cassandra. “A Genealogy of (post-) Soviet Dependency: Disabling Productivity.” In What is Postsocialism and What Comes Next? Whiteness, Transparency and the Politics of Care [working title], Zsuzsa Gille, ed.: n.d. Submitted to editor.

Hartblay, Cassandra. "Accessing Possibility: Disability, Parent-Activists and Citizenship in Contemporary Russia." Masters Thesis. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, forthcoming, Spring 2012.

Hartblay, Cassandra. “Liminality in Love: Reading Ritualized Institutional Practice as Civil Society in Alina Rudnitskaya's Civil Status,” Anthropology of Eastern Europe Review, Fall 2011.

Hartblay, Cassandra. "Da, Waldorf!: Finding an Educational Approach for Children with Disabilities in a Siberian Village," The Research Bulletin for Waldorf Education, Fall 2009.

"An Absolutely Different Life: locating disability, motherhood, and local power in rural Siberia"  Undergraduate Honors Thesis.  Macalester College, 2006.  http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/anth_honors/1/