Peripheral Narratives and Knowledge Production in Soviet and Contemporary Central Asia, 1917–Present

Authors

Eva Rogaar (ed)
Joe Lenkart (ed)
Katherine Ashcraft (ed)

Keywords:

Central Asia, Eurasia, History, Culture, Minorities

Synopsis

Forthcoming title:

Over the past decades, Central Asian Studies has become a rapidly growing academic field within the Humanities and Social Sciences. Despite increased international academic attention, Central Asian scholars remain strikingly underrepresented in English-language published works on this region. Peripheral Narratives and Knowledge Production in Soviet and Contemporary Central Asia, 1917-Present examines the roots of knowledge production and preservation in Central Asia, and presents new perspectives on the roles of knowledge repositories and institutions in shaping collective memory. 

Chapters

  • Introduction
    Eva Rogaar, Joe Lenkart, Katherine Ashcraft
  • A Central Asian Trilogy
    The Legacy of Aitmatov in Ismailov’s Vunderkind Erzhan
    Caterina Re
  • Artistic Interventions
    Working with Environmental (In)Justices in Peripheral Places
    Jeanine Dağyeli, Anastassiya Kulinova
  • Ruins and Resilience
    Preserving the Legacy of the Kyrgyz Soviet Era
    Kateřina Zäch
  • Music, Place, and the Sacred
    Analyzing Qasīda-khonī in Understanding Place
    Chorshanbe Goibnazarov
  • Music as Historical Evidence
    Oral Songs in the Lives of Koreitsy
    Kim Lacey
  • Between Karbala and the Tragedy in Bukhara, 1910
    Collective Memory and Identity among Bukhara’s Shiites
    Erik Musaevich Seitov
  • The Term “Many Mongols” as an Early Nationalist Construct to Greater Mongolian Nationalism
    The Case Study of Magsar Khurts
    Zolboo Sandagjav
  • Family, Social Transformation, and Colonial Rule in the Kazakh Steppe between Russian and Soviet Rule (the End of the Nineteenth–Early Twentieth Centuries)
    Zhanturins and Asfendiarovs
    Ulzhan Tuleshova
  • Alternative Dispute Resolution Institutions in Contemporary Kazakhstan
    Recontextualizing Cultural Heritage of the Bi Institution
    Beibit Yu. Shangirbayeva
  • Kazakh and Turkic Alphabet Reform, 1900–1939
    Change Without Change
    Ulbossyn Parmanova

Author Biographies

Eva Rogaar

Eva Rogaar is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Amsterdam School for Regional, Transnational, and European Studies (ARTES), University of Amsterdam, where she is part of the ERC-funded research project “Building a Better Tomorrow: Development Knowledge and Practice in Central Asia and Beyond, 1970-2017.” She holds a PhD in History from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2022). Her research interests include religious and ethnic minorities in Eurasia, history of science and medicine, gender and sexuality, oral and life histories, and sociocultural dimensions of economic development.

Joe Lenkart

Joe Lenkart is an Associate Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research interests include ethnic and religious minorities; ethnic press; history of publishing; and global diasporas. He is the co-founder of the Doctoral Research Support Program and the Global Diasporas Program at the University of Illinois. He is also co-director of the Central Asia Research Cluster and the upcoming project, "Muslim Lives in A Shifting World: Revivals, Encounters, and Identities in Late Soviet and Contemporary Russia, 1970s-Present." 

Katherine Ashcraft

Katherine Ashcraft is a reference librarian with the Slavic Reference Service at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Katherine holds an MS in Library and Information Sciences and a MA in History from the University of Illinois (2023). Her research interests include the history of Soviet publishing, Tajik children’s literature, and contemporary Central Asian libraries.

Jeanine Dağyeli

Jeanine Dağyeli is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Near Eastern Studies, University of Vienna, Austria and Research Fellow at the Institute of Iranian Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences. Her regional expertise is Central Asia. Her research interests include human-environment relations, labor, media, and cultural heritage from both historical and anthropological perspectives.

Anastassiya Kulinova

Anastassiya Kulinova is a doctoral student in the Eurasian Studies program at Nazarbayev University, Republic of Kazakhstan. Her current research concentrates on the multifaceted and changing relations within the carbon rich areas of Kuznetsk Basin, where she explores the dynamic interplay between local communities, more than human beings, and changing land. Her research interests embrace socio-environmental effects of resource extraction, multispecies relations, cultural landscape, cultural identity, oral histories, social and environmental justice, and shifting interdependencies between environment, art, and literature.

Chorshanbe Goibnazarov

Chorshanbe Goibnazarov is an Assistant Professor and Research Fellow at the UCA’s School of Arts and Sciences and the Graduate School of Development. He teaches Cultural Landscapes at the Naryn and Khorog Campuses. He holds a Ph.D. in Central Asian and Cultural Studies from the Institute of Asian and African Studies at the Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, and a Master of Arts in Muslim Cultures from the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilizations at the Aga Khan University in London, UK. Goibnazarov was on the Fulbright Visiting Scholar fellowship for the 2019-2020 academic year at the Music Department of Harvard University. Additionally, he was granted funding through the Erasmus+ Staff Mobility Program for his research work at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in 2023.

Kim Lacey

Kim Lacey is a doctoral candidate in History at Washington University in St. Louis. Her dissertation examines the social history of ethnic Korean migrants in the Soviet Union, particularly their role and place in the community. Her areas of research include migration to and from the Japanese Empire and the Russian Far East, oral history, and gender. Kim holds a BA in Eurasian and East European Studies from Bowdoin College and an MA in International Relations from the University of Chicago. 

Ulbossyn Parmanova

Ulbossyn Parmanova is a third-year PhD student in the Linguistics department of the University of Georgia. Her major focus is on early child language development, bilingualism, Second Language teaching and pedagogy, language policy and sociolinguistic studies. Ulbossyn majored in Kazakh Language and Literature at Al-Farabi Kazakh National University (2013) and earned an MA degree in Linguistics (2015) exploring code choices, language contact, and Kazakh-Russian bilingualism in college students. Ulbossyn Parmanova taught Kazakh language at KIMEP University to both foreign students and KIMEP undergraduate students. In 2020 she was awarded with the Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistantship grant to teach Kazakh language to the Flagship students at the University of Georgia. 

Caterina Re

Caterina Re is a PhD student in Russian literature at the University of Genoa (Italy). Her research explores late Soviet and post-Soviet literature from Central Asia, focusing especially on the works of Chingiz Aitmatov, Andrei Volos and Hamid Ismailov. Her broader interests include cultural, historical and social transformations after the fall of the Soviet Union; Soviet orientalism; concepts of identity and otherness; questions of national identity and nationalism in relation to language and ethnicity; the relationship between literature and ecology in the Anthropocene. Her recent articles investigate: 1) the issue of the Aral Sea throughout the artistic production of Central Asia, 2) the presence of animals – human and non – in Chingiz Aitmatov’s Kogda padaiut gory (Vechnaia nevesta), and Andrei Volos’s Palang, adopting an ecological approach to literature (2023). 

Zolboo Sandagjav

Zolboo Sandagjav is a doctoral candidate in history at the Institute for the Science of Religion and Central Asian Studies at the University of Bern, Switzerland. His academic background includes a bachelor’s degree from the University of Delhi, India and a master’s degree from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. His current research focuses on nationalism, national identity and identity politics in the early communist and post-communist Mongolia. 

Erik Musaevich Seitov

Erik Musaevich Seitov is a social anthropologist who currently works as a junior research associate at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. His research interests include Twelver Shi’ism in post-Soviet Central Asia, the Moscow region, and Southern Dagestan; cyber-Islam; religion and collective memory; and vernacular religious practices. 

Beibit Yu. Shangirbayeva

Dr Beibit Yu.Shangirbayeva was an Associate Professor at International Law Department and Deputy Dean for the Student Affairs at Law School of L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University (Astana, Kazakhstan). Dr Shangirbayeva defended PhD in Italy at Sant ’Anna School of Advanced Studies, had postdoctoral trainings in Europe and was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar in 2020-21 at Arizona State University (USA). Apart from doing research and teaching, Beibit’s experience includes working at international organizations and diplomatic representations, oil and gas service company. Dr Shangirbayeva’s research interests cover international and constitutional law, theory and history of state and law, human rights, law-making and politics, and other areas. She is also the first Kazakh single author female to publish a monograph for the Wolters Kluwer (2020). 

Ulzhan Tuleshova

Dr. Ulzhan Tuleshova is a Senior Instructor of the Historical Department at Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, located in Almaty, Republic of Kazakhstan. Ulzhan specialized in the Social History of Kazakhs during the 19th and 20th centuries under the rule of the Russian Empire. Her dedication to scholarly pursuits is reflected in the numerous accolades she has received, including prestigious scholarships such as the Bolashak fellowship (2022), a Governmental scholarship for young talented scientists of the Republic of Kazakhstan (2021), and a Grant for a young scholar from the Russian Federal Property Fund on the subject: "Social policy of the Russian Empire in the Kazakh Steppe in the 19th century: the problem of formation of new estates" (2019), among others. Her latest publication, "Nomadic Nobles: Pastoralism and Privilege in the Russian Empire," co-authored with Gulmira Sultangalieva and Paul W. Werth, was featured in Slavic Review, Volume 81, Issue 1, 2022. 

Kateřina Zäch

Kateřina Zäch is a doctoral student in human geography at the University of Fribourg. Her research focuses on the concept of materiality, allowing her to explore the intersection of human and non-human elements in the realm of everyday water politics. It involves studying rural economies concerning intricate water landscapes, using an evolutionary perspective on water infrastructure development to unravel the complex interplay of material culture and human actions. Her research interests span the theory of materiality, social life and practices in rural livelihoods, development and transition, cultural heritage, and contemporary social theory of Central Asia. 

Two men at the library at the Bukhara bazaar (one standing behind a counter and one sitting reading a book) with the title of the book listed in white text on black backgroud above the image and names of editors listed below..

Published

October 30, 2024