University Directory

Melissa A. Chakars, PhD

Professor and Chair of History

Melissa Chakars PhD

Department

Office

Barbelin 112L

Phone

610-660-1745
Contact

Dr. Chakars is professor and chair of the Department of History at Saint Joseph’s University. She specializes in Eurasian history with a focus on the Mongolian and Siberian peoples of Russia. She has published numerous articles on topics of empire, identity, media, religion, and gender, as well as two co-edited volumes: Buryat Intellectuals in Empire and Revolution (Routledge, 2025); Modernization, Nation-Building, and Television History (Routledge, 2015). Her monograph, The Socialist Way of Life in Siberia: Transformation in Buryatia was published by Central European University Press in 2014 and in Russian translation in 2022 by Academic Studies Press as Социалистический образ жизни в Сибири: Преобразования в Бурятии. She is currently working on a book about the history of Buddhism in the Russian Empire and Soviet Union with a focus on the Kalmyk, Buryat, and Tyvan peoples. Dr. Chakars has lived, studied, and worked abroad in the Russian cities of Ulan-Ude and Vladivostok, in the capital of Latvia, Riga, and in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia. She came to Saint Joseph's University in 2010.

    • BA, Hunter College, City University of New York
    • MA, PhD, Indiana University
    • Chakars, Melissa and Nikolay Tsyrempilov, eds. Buryat Intellectuals in Empire and Revolution (Routledge, 2025)
    • “The Cooperation of Lamas and Lay Leaders in Introducing, Expanding, and Protecting Buddhism among the Buryats, Kalmyks, and Tyvans,” Mongolian Studies 42 (2024): 44-66.
    • Социалистический образ жизни в Сибири: Преобразования в Бурятии. Saint Petersburg, Russia: Academic Studies Press, Библиороссика, 2022.
      • This is the translation into Russian of my book, The Socialist Way of Life: Transformation in Buryatia, which was originally published by Central European University Press.
    • “Buddhism and the Siberian Buryat Chronicles: Stories of Origin, Rivalry, and Negotiation in the Russian Empire,” History of Religions 60/2 (2020): 81-102.
    • “The All-Buryat Congress for the Spiritual Rebirth and Consolidation of the Nation: Siberian Politics in the Final Year of the USSR,” Journal of Eurasian Studies (2020): 62-71.
    • “Minority Education Policy: The Endangered Buryat Language and Inner Mongolian,” Mongol Survey, no. 41 (Spring-Fall 2020): 2-3.
    • “Creating Buddhist Sacred Geography in the 17th and 18th Centuries: Analyzing and Comparing Stories from the Buryat and Kalmyk Chronicles,” Sacred Geography: Multi-Disciplinary Approaches in Space and Time. Nur-Sultan: Nazarbayev University, 2020, 152-160.
    • “The Repression of Buryat Buddhism in the 1930s: Competing Narratives of Soviet and Western Histories During the Cold War,” Mongolian Studies 38 (2019): 31-46.
    • “Free Time is Not Meant to be Wasted: Educational, Political, and Taboo Leisure Activities among the Soviet Buryats of Eastern Siberia,” Nationalities Papers 47/4 (2019): 660-673.
    • “Disassembledge in the Siberian City of Ulan-Ude: How Ethnic Buryats Reconstruct through Time and Space,” co-authored with Elizabeth L. Sweet in ed. Elizabeth L. Sweet, Disassembled Cities: Social and Spatial Strategies to Reassemble Communities. (Routledge, 2018), 156-170.
    • Modernization, Nation-Building, and Television History, eds. Stewart Anderson and Melissa Chakars (Routledge, 2015)
      • Co-editor for the entire book.
      • Co-author of the Introduction with Stewart Anderson, pp. 1-18.
      • Author of Chapter 8, “Flowers, Steppe Fires, and Communists: Images of Modernity and Identity on TV Shows from Soviet Buryatia in the Brezhnev Era,” pp. 147-164.
    • “Daily Life and Party Ideals on Late Soviet-Era Radio and Television Programming for Children, Teenagers, and Youth in Buryatia,” Études Mongoles et Sibériennes et Centrasiatiques et Tibétaines, 46 (2015)
    • The Socialist Way of Life in Siberia: Transformation in Buryatia (Central European University Press, 2014)
    • “Professional Women and the Economic Practices of Success and Survival Before and After Regime Change: Diverse Economies and Restructuring in the Russian Republic of Buryatia,” co-authored with Elizabeth L. Sweet. GeoJournal, 79/5 (2014): 649-663.                  
    • “Identity, Culture, Land, and Language: Stories of Insurgent Planning in Buryatia, Russia,” co-authored with Elizabeth L. Sweet. Journal of Planning Education and Research 30/2 December (2010): 198-209.
    • “Buryat Literature as a Political and Cultural Institution from the 1950s to the 1970s,” Inner Asia 11 (2009): 47-63.

  • Dr. Chakars’s current research project is a history of Buddhism in the Russian Empire and former Soviet Union.