This talk concerns the Uyghurs who crossed the border and moved to Soviet Central Asia from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the 1950s and 1960s. It focuses on the process of the Uyghur migration, the reasons behind it, and the lives of Uyghurs in the Soviet Union. The talk is based on oral interviews conducted in the summer of 2016 in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The interviews show that in addition to harsh Chinese policy towards the local peoples of Xinjiang, Soviet propaganda played a significant role in encouraging people to leave their homeland for the USSR, depicted in the propaganda as a land of paradise.

In this presentation, I will offer an archaeology of political practice in early Inner Asia, with an analysis of the operation of power through material and symbolic practices. The major question that guides my research is: how is materiality engaged in political practices and in the negotiation and expression of socio-political relations.

SPEAKER: Christopher Fort, University of Michigan
Abstract: Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, historians of Central Asia and the Soviet Union have frequently asked to what extent the post-colonial theory developed by writers of Africa and Asia can be applied to Soviet Central Asia. In answering this question, most have reexamined the founding moments of the USSR under Lenin and Stalin. In this presentation, I turn our attention to the 1990s and the breakup itself, comparing post-Soviet independence to anti-colonial revolution. 

SPEAKER: Gabriel McGuire, Nazarbayev University
Abstract: The paradox of the horse in Central Asia is that it appear, at first glance, to simultaneously hold the place of ideal companion and ideal food. In Kazakhstan, the meat of horses above all other animals holds the highest value: its acquisition drives households to band together to collect the money necessary for its purchase; its presence at funerals, weddings, and seasonal celebrations mark these events as qualitatively different from everyday life.

SPEAKER: Naomi Caffee, University of Arizona
Abstract: What are the limits of Russian literature? What factors--language proficiency, citizenship, geographic location, family heritage--qualify someone as "Russian" or "not Russian?" Entering into dialogue with research in Francophone and Sinophone Studies, this talk introduces the transnational framework of “Russophonia” in order to analyze literature produced from within a variety of geopolitical, cultural, sociolinguistic, virtual, and subjective spaces shaped by the Russian language.

SPEAKER: Ali İğmen, California State University
Abstract: Nazim Hikmet became an iconic figure in his homeland Turkey only decades after his death in 1965. As a son of an Ottoman civil servant father and a painter mother, Hikmet is reflective of a generation of young Ottoman subjects who learned about and struggled with modernity, nationalism, and communism. 

 
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SPEAKER: Charles Shaw, Central European University
Abstract: What was Nasriddin afandi, the trickster of the Islamicate world, doing at the heart of Soviet culture during its war with Nazi Germany? This talk discusses Nasreddin in Bukhara (1943), the last film of Soviet director Yakov Protazanov, which was filmed in evacuation Uzbekistan and starred an array of Soviet acting elites.

 
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SPEAKER: Diana Kudaibergenova
Short abstract: The understanding of regional locality and, moreover, of regional art and cultural production poses important questions, namely, What is Central Asia and Where is Central Asia? “Central Asia” is a multi-layered jigsaw that appears as a fairly simple and well-defined but in reality as very complex yet very exciting “lively space”. 

 
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Abstract: This presentation explores the perception of public art in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan through the lenses of collective memory, nationalism, and sociology. Using both Pierre Nora’s concepts of lieux de memoire (places of memory) and Lefebvre’s ideas of the subjective construction of space, I investigate pieces of public art in Bishkek as evocative of history and memory, as dynamic sites in which memory practices occur, elucidating the various relationships denizens of Bishkek have to pieces of art with varying historical symbols. 

SPEAKER: Matthew Derrick, Humboldt State University
Abstract: Religion has emerged as a powerful social and political force in the post-Soviet space, particularly in the independent states of Central Asia and the Muslim-majority autonomous regions of the Russian Federation. This talk examines the so-called religious revival among Muslims of post-Soviet Tatarstan, Russia, showing how changing political-territorial circumstances over the past quarter century have impacted the meaning and social expression of Islam in that region.