Peter Kabachnik

I am a Professor of Geography, and Coordinator of the Geography program, at the College of Staten Island-CUNY.

Dr. Peter Kabachnik, Professor of Geography, was hired at the College of Staten Island-CUNY in 2008 and became a part of the Graduate Center graduate faculty in Earth and Environmental Sciences in 2011. He received his PhD in Geography (2007) from the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA). He is a political and cultural geographer, whose interests lie in the way that people interact with places, and the interplay between place, mobility, and identity more generally. He is currently working on a research project examining the role that personality cults play as a form of social and spatial control in authoritarian regimes. This project explores more broadly how personality cults function, how they act as a disciplinary mechanism, and how they engender practices of compliance and resistance. He also examines the role of cultural memory and memorialized landscapes in shaping national narratives, geopolitical contestations, and people’s everyday practices. He is particularly interested in post-Soviet memory and the memorialized landscape in Georgia, focusing on contemporary understandings of Stalin. His previous research has investigated topics such as discrimination against nomadic Gypsy and Traveler groups and the issues facing internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Georgia.

Contact

718-982-2916

Academic Interests

[political geography] [cultural geography] [geopolitics] [memorialized landscapes] [cultural memory] [cult of personality] [Georgia] [Caucasus] [post-Soviet space] [Roma] [Gypsies] [Travelers] [displacement] [refugees] [IDPs] [space] [place] [mobility] [nomadism]

Positions

Professor of Geography, Political Science and Global Affairs, College of Staten Island

Education

Ph.D, Geography, University of California—Los Angeles (UCLA), 2007

M.A., Geography, Rutgers University, 2002

B.A., English, Rutgers University, 1999

Publications

[Refereed Journal Articles]

Kabachnik, Peter, Grabowska, Magda, Regulska, Joanna, Mitchneck, Beth, and Mayorova, Olga V. 2013. “Traumatic Masculinities: The Gendered Geographies of Georgian IDPs from Abkhazia.” Gender, Place, and Culture. 20 (6): 773-793.

Kabachnik, Peter and Ryder, Andrew. 2013. “Nomadism and the 2003 Anti-Social Behaviour Act: Constraining Gypsy and Traveller Mobilities in Britain.” Romani Studies. 23 (1): 83-106.

Kabachnik, Peter. 2013. “Prison, Nuisance, or Spectacle?: The 2009 “Cell” Protests in Tbilisi, Georgia.” Geopolitics. 18 (1): 1-23.

Kabachnik, Peter. 2012. “Shaping Abkhazia: Cartographic Anxieties and the Making and Remaking of the Abkhazian Geobody.” Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies. 14 (4): 397- 415.

Kabachnik, Peter. 2012. “Nomads and Mobile Places: Disentangling Place, Space, and Mobility.” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power. 19 (2): 210-228.

Kabachnik, Peter, Regulska, Joanna, and Mitchneck, Beth. 2012. “Displacing Blame: Georgian Internally Displaced Person Perspectives of the Georgia-Abkhazia Conflict.” Ethnopolitics. 11 (2): 123-140.

Kabachnik, Peter. 2012. “Wounds That Won’t Heal: Cartographic Anxieties and the Quest for Territorial Integrity in Georgia.” Central Asian Survey. 31 (1): 45-60.

Kabachnik, Peter, Regulska, Joanna, and Mitchneck, Beth. 2010. “Where and When is Home? The Double Displacement of Georgian IDPs from Abkhazia.” The Journal of Refugee Studies. 23 (3): 315-336.

Kabachnik, Peter. 2010. “England or Uruguay?: The Persistence of Place and the Myth of the Placeless Gypsy.” Area. 42 (2): 198-207.

Kabachnik, Peter. 2010. “Place Invaders: Constructing the Nomadic Threat in England.” Geographical Review. 100 (1): 90-108.

Kabachnik, Peter. 2009. “To Choose, Fix, or Ignore Culture? The Cultural Politics of Gypsy and Traveler Mobility in England.” Social and Cultural Geography. 10 (4): 461-479.

Kabachnik, Peter. 2009. “The Culture of Crime: Examining Representations of Irish Travelers in Traveller and The Riches.” Romani Studies. 19 (1): 49-64.

Book Reviews and Other Publications

Kabachnik, Peter. 2013. “Book Review – The Caucasus Under Soviet Rule.” Central Asian Survey. 32 (1): 102-104.

Jimenez, Jeremy and Kabachnik, Peter. 2012. “The Other Iraq: Exploring Iraqi Kurdistan.” FOCUS on Geography. 55 (2): 31-40. (Refereed)

Kabachnik, Peter. 2007. “Book Review – Here to Stay: The Gypsies and Travellers of Britain.” Romani Studies. 17 (2): 250-254.

Kovács, Melinda and Kabachnik, Peter. 2001. “A Kvantitatív másság felfedezése: Az EU diskurzusa az 1997- esországvéleményekben .” (Hungarian translation of “Shedding Light on the Quantitative Other”). Replika. 45-46 (November): 61-88. (Reprinted)

Mitchell, James K., Kabachnik, Peter, Donovan, Robert, Noguchi, Junko and Mitchell, Tom. 2001. “Field Observations of Lower Manhattan in the Aftermath of the World Trade Center Disaster: September 30th, 2001.” Quick Response Report 139, Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Access at: www.colorado.edu/hazards/qr/qr.html.