A Word from the Director, Fall 2023
Director Jamsheed Choksy, Distinguished Professor of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University, gives his thoughts on this year's activities.
Director Jamsheed Choksy, Distinguished Professor of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University, gives his thoughts on this year's activities.
The IAUNRC has continued its long tradition of K-12 outreach with a series of school visits this fall.
On November 30th, Dr. Kadri Koreinik gave a talk entitled “Different paths to revival: Estonian Võro and Seto speakers in focus“ as part of the IAUNRC’s lecture series on minorities in Central Eurasian societies. Dr. Koreinik is an Associate Professor of language sociology at the University of Tartu.
Cristina Palmer is a CEUS alumna and former IAUNRC graduate assistant who spent the last two months teaching English at a school in Kulan, a small town in the south of Kazakhstan, not far from the Kyrgyz border. She writes about an exhibition of tratitional Kyrgyz textiles at the Kyrgyz National Museum of Fine Arts she visited on a recent trip to Bishkek.
On November 13, the Association of Central Eurasian Students hosted a Brown Bag Talk by Dr. Bence Ságvári, a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Social Science at Central European University and current Visiting Hungarian Lecturer in the Department of Central Eurasian Studies at IU. This talk was titled "Beyond the Screen: Understanding Society through Digital Footprints."
On November 10, in partnership with the Islamic Studies Program, the IAUNRC was pleased to co-sponsor a lecture by Jeff Eden, Assistant Professor of History at Northwestern University. Dr. Eden is an alumnus of the Department of Central Eurasian Studies (M.A., 2010) and a long-time friend of CEUS and the Center.
On November 2nd, the Department of Central Eurasian Studies hosted Janet Gyatso, Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies at Harvard Divinity School, for a lecture titled “Doing Tibetology through the Lens of the Literary, and what that does to Tibetology,” as part of the Jean and Denis Sinor Faculty Fellowship Lecture Series.
On September 28th, Muslim Voices IU hosted an the event "Deterring Islamophobia with Citizen Diplomacy," which featured a talk from attorney Sahar Taman. IAUNRC co-sponsored this event.
Director Jamsheed Choksy, Interim Chair and Distinguished Professor of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University, gives his thoughts on this year's activities.
The IAUNRC is working diligently on our responses to the current Title VI grant’s competitive priority by collaborating with Community Colleges, Minority Serving Institutions and Historically Black Colleges.
The IAUNRC organized a 3-part lecture series titled "Understanding Iran 2023" during the Spring 2023 semester. This series of talks brought in experts in various fields to discuss issues surrounding contemporary politics in Iran.
On Thursday, April 6, Dr. Togzhan Kassenova visited Bloomington to give a talk on her book, Atomic Steppe: How Kazakhstan Gave up the Bomb, recently published by Stanford University Press. During this talk, she discussed her research methodologies and inspirations for writing this book and discussed developments in Kazakhstan since its publication.
On March 27, Dr. Birute Klaas-Lang, professor of Estonian as a Foreign Language and head of the Department for Applied Linguistics at the University of Tartu, delivered a Jean and Denis Sinor Faculty Fellowship Lecture titled “Future of Estonian-Medium University Education.” Dr. Klaas-Lang’s research analyzes the historical relationship between Estonian state language legislation, language-of-instruction (LOI) policy in Estonian institutions of higher education, and the status of Estonian language relative to English and Russian.
On April 20, a scholar at IU gave a detailed presentation about the role of Tatar language, religious values, and mythological creatures in modern Tatar life and identity. The presenter explored several avenues of exchange between culture and everyday language use in the context of the Tatar mythological pantheon.
In March, the Center sponsored two talks by Agata Bareja-Starzyńska, Associate Professor of the Faculty of Oriental Studies and head of the Department of Turkish Studies and Inner Asian Peoples at the University of Warsaw. Dr. Bareja-Starzyńska is a long-time friend of Indiana University and the Department of Central Eurasian Studies, having spent a semester in Bloomington as an exchange scholar in 2000.
Department of Central Eurasian Studies Alumni Jessica Storey-Nagy and Emily Stranger were interviewed by Hamilton Lugar School News about their jobs teaching critical language and cultural skills to United States armed forces.
In March, the Center sponsored two talks by Agata Bareja-Starzyńska, Associate Professor of the Faculty of Oriental Studies and head of the Department of Turkish Studies and Inner Asian Peoples at the University of Warsaw. Dr. Bareja-Starzyńska is a long-time friend of Indiana University and the Department of Central Eurasian Studies, having spent a semester in Bloomington as an exchange scholar in 2000.
For the first time since before the COVID pandemic, the Bloomington Mongolian community came together to celebrate the Mongolian New Year, Tsagaan Sar. This February, Mongolian language students, faculty, staff, friends, and many more gathered together to celebrate the beginning of the new year.
On October 17, Dr. Miina Norvik joined the IAUNRC for a lecture on her ongoing research project titled “Uralic Languages in New Large-Scale Databases.”