GEOGRAPHY 308:
Geography of Russia and
Eastern Europe
Office Hours
JEFF DEGRAVE
140 Phillips Hall
2:00pm – 3:00pm M,W
4:15pm – 5:00pm M
3:30 – 4:00pm TR
-OR- by appointment
Tel: 836-4471
Email: degravjr@uwec.edu
Web: http://people.uwec.edu/degravjr/Geography308.htm
Who am I
Born in Green Bay
My mother’s maiden name is
“Lasecki.”
Lena, WI
Polish
Ancestry in
Wisconsin
Polish Immigration
• 9.8% of Wisconsinites are of
Polish descent (largest % of
any state)
• WI has the 6th highest Polishdescent population (Illinois #2)
• Chicago is “2nd Largest
1871
Polish city in the World”
(Warsaw)
• Many Poles came to the
Midwest to work in the food
industry (farms, factories)
1795
?
Today
Pickles!
• Dill and garlicprepared
pickles come
from Slavic
origins (Czech
and Polish)
Poznan, Poland 1991
Graduated High School in Toledo, Ohio
•
Eau Claire
•
Toledo
Undergraduate:
Ohio University
(Athens, OH)
Graduate:
Florida State University
(Tallahassee, FL)
Currently:
U of Minnesota
(Ph.D. Candidate)
Things I like:
Dark
Chocolate
Unique Architecture
Traveling
Old Stuff
Cultures of the World
Things I
DO NOT like:
• Hot Dogs
• Baloney
• CHEATING!
What is cheating?
• Referred to as “Academic Misconduct”
• Comes in a wide variety of forms,
techniques, definitions—see syllabus
• Plagiarism
Q: Is copying and pasting information
off the Internet without citing your
source considered to be plagiarism?
YES!
Plagiarism:
Example I
The Volga is the largest
river in Europe in terms
of length, discharge,
and watershed. It goes
through western Russia and people say its the
national river of Russia, flowing through eleven of
the twenty biggest cities in Russia. Some of the
largest reservoirs in the world can be found along
the Volga. A Russian hydronym "Волга" is akin
to the Slavic word for "wetness."
Plagiarism:
Example II
Kaliningrad is a ice-free Russian Baltic Sea port and
hence plays an important role in maintenance of the
Baltic Fleet. Because Russia collapsed in 1991, the
Kaliningrad Oblast became an exclave,
geographically separated from the rest of Russia. It
was a part from the rest of the USSR and got even
more pronounced politically when Poland and
Lithuania became members of NATO and
subsequently the European Union in 2004.[9]
DO NOT COPY
AND PASTE
INFORMATION
FROM THE
INTERNET!
My Philosophy
Your Education = Your Job
Questions?
Has anyone ever been to “Eastern Europe?”
“Eastern Europe”
What is
Eastern
Europe,
anyway?
This?
How do you know when you are
in “Eastern Europe?”
Now Entering
Eastern Europe
Europe
What the heck is “Europe?”
“Europe”
But where is
Phoenicia?
According to
many scholars,
the word
“Europe”
originally comes
from the word
“Ereb,” a
Phoenician
word meaning
“sunset.”
Phoenicia: was an
ancient civilization
established along the
Med coast in what is
now Lebanon and Syria
And what is the most common
ethnicity in this part of the world?
(The Middle East)
Arabic
(Erebic)
And what religion do we often
associate with the Arab world?
Islam (Muslims)
Wait a minute.
SO WHAT if the words
“Europe” and “Arab”
come from the same root
(“Ereb”). What does this
have to with places like
Bulgaria?
“Eastern Europe” is
the collision of
“Western Europe” and
the “Middle East”
Religions of Europe
██ Roman Catholicism
██ Orthodox Christianity
██ Protestantism
██ Sunni Islam
██ Shi’a Islam
…and more!
Islam in Europe
Region
Total Pop
Muslims
% Muslim
W. Europe
E. Europe
Balkans
Mid-East
375,832,557
212,821,296
65,407,609
274,775,527
13,577,116
3.6%
21,826,829 10.3%
8,165,137
12.5%
252,219,832 91.8%
Islam in Eurasia
Europe vs. the “Stans”
Eastern Europe embodies the word “Ereb.”
But where does it begin? And end?
U.S. Cold War Point of View
European
Union
Point of
View
Linguistic
Point of
View
Slavic Languages
Religious
Point of
View
Eastern
Orthodox
Rand
McNally
Point of
View
Convention
Ural
Mountains
Geog 308
Point of
View
Plus… the CIS
…and all the federal
subjects of Russia.
Just kidding.
The Big
Picture