Our newsletter takes the form of an occasional blog publication designed to keep alumni and CEUS supporters aware of CEUS’s activities.
The newest edition is out: Summer 2022
Older editions:
Posted on by mkamp
Our newsletter takes the form of an occasional blog publication designed to keep alumni and CEUS supporters aware of CEUS’s activities.
The newest edition is out: Summer 2022
Older editions:
Posted on by mkamp
In Spring 2022, Covid-19 receded enough that the University lifted its in-person mask requirement. Teaching normalized, although department-hosted talks continued to proceed online more frequently than in person.
This also meant that academic travel reopened, making possible the first CEUS faculty-led study abroad trip. CEUS’s Malik Hodjaev’s connections in Samarkand were instrumental for creating this 10-day trip to Uzbekistan for five IU students and one faculty assistant.
A short video, featuring students talking about their experiences in Uzbekistan, can be found on CEUS Undergraduate page–just scroll down.
Department Milestones
Department faculty, present students, and former students mourned the passing of Dr. György Kara, whose life and illustrious career as the world’s foremost philologist of Mongolic and other Central Eurasian languages ended on April 16, 2022. His legacy endures in his vast body of published research, and in the scholarship of the many students whom he trained. Visiting Assistant Professor Sam Bass and Prof. Chris Attwood (University of Pennsylvania), who are among the many scholars who constitute Dr. Kara’s living legacy, organized several memorial events, including a virtual meeting, for which some of the tributes can be found here. Panels in memory of Dr. Kara will take place at the upcoming joint Mongolia Society and Central Eurasian Studies Society conference, at IU on October 20-23.
Öner Özçelik survived his first year as CEUS chair, with numerous accomplishments. A small but significant accomplishment that will benefit CEUS grad students is Özçelik’s announcement of a new grant, funded from CEUS’s foundation accounts, in support of graduate research travel. His sabbatical year began on July 1, 2022. CEUS’s previous chair, Jamsheed Choksy, will serve as interim chair for the 2022-2023 academic year.
The CEUS faculty offer our congratulations on retirement to our colleague Professors Nazif Shahrani (CEUS, Anthropology, and Middle Eastern Studies), and on his status as Emeritus Professor. Throughout his long career at IU, Professor Shahrani supervised many graduate students whose research focused on Afghanistan or Central Asia and ethnography. His recent edited collection, Modern Afghanistan: the impact of 40 years of war (Indiana University Press 2018), offers readers a multi-faceted understanding of the dynamics shaping Afghan lives in twenty-first century. Prof. Shahrani’s final year of teaching at IU was one that brought new requests for his insights, following the US withdrawal from Afghanistan; retirement notwithstanding, his expertise will continue to be in demand.
Faculty News
Akram Habibulla (IU Libraries) presented “Muḥammad Pārsā’s (d. 1420) Library: History and Overview of the Collection” as an online lecture for the Institute of Iranian Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences.
Michael Brose’s co-edited volume about Eastern European academic studies of China during the Cold War was published: Antonina Łuszczykiewicz and Michael C. Brose, eds. Sinology During the Cold War. London and New York: Routledge, 2022
Piibi-Kai Kivik presented “New connections for the Estonian language program” at the 28th Biennial AABS Conference “Baltic Studies at a Crossroads” in Seattle.
Eveline Washul and co-author Yumjyi published a chapter, “Amdo: Social Landscapes and Change,” in The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Highland Asia. London: Routledge, 2022.
Ann Pyburn (Anthropology) received the Presidential Award at the World Archaeological Congress, conferred during July 2022 meeting in Prague by president Koji Mitzoguchi and WAC-9 Board. This award is conferred every 4 years.
Jamsheed Choksy was elected as a Fellow by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Marianne Kamp and Niccolò Pianciola published a chapter,“Collectivisation, Sedentarisation, and Famine in Central Asia,” in Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Central Asia. London: Routledge 2022
CEUS students news
Jessica Storey-Nagy finished her doctorate in CEUS in summer 2022. Her dissertation title is “Sovereign Voices: Politics, Identity, and Meaning-Making in Contemporary Hungary.” She has taken a teaching position at Ft. Carson military base in Colorado Springs, Colorado, as a Regional Expertise and Culture (REC) Instructor for the 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne), teaching courses on European politics and culture.
Dinara Abakirova graduated with an MA degree. Her thesis is entitled “Sovietness of Kyrgyz War Letters.”
Three CEUS undergraduate majors completed their BA degrees in Spring 2022: Nicholas Deem; Susruth Emmadi; and Chen Wu, who is starting an MA degree in Religious Studies at Harvard.
Alumni news
David Tyson spoke at CEUS (sponsored by IAUNRC) about his role in the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan, a story told by author Tony Harnden in First Casualty: the Untold Story of the CIA Mission to Avenge 911. Little, Brown 2021.
Allen Frank (1994) published a new monograph: Kazakh Muslims in the Red Army: 1939-1945. Brill’s Inner Asian Library 2022.
Chris Atwood (1994) published The Rise of the Mongols: Five Chinese Sources. Hackett Publishing 2021.
Zsuzsanna Gulácsi, along with two co-authors, published A Manichaean Prayer and Confession Book. Brepols 2022.
The editor would love to hear from alumni about recent book publishing.
Fundraising
Please consider making a donation of any size to CEUS. You can do so through the IU Foundation portal for CEUS: Make a Gift (myiu.org)
Include a message that can direct your donation to one of the Department priorities, such as supporting undergraduate scholarships and study abroad, or graduate scholarships and research funds, or for a specific area, such as the Elliott Sperling memorial fund for Tibetan Studies.
Comments and Contact
To leave a comments, you will need to provide your name and email. All comments will be embargoed until approved by the editor
To contact the editor with news: send email to mkamp (at) indiana.edu Make sure that your subject line references the CEUS newsletter.
Editor: Marianne Kamp, Associate Professor, CEUS
Posted on by mkamp
After seven years of dedicated service as Chair of the CEUS Department, Professor Jamsheed Choksy stepped down, and the faculty elected Associate Professor Őner Őzçelik as the new department Chair. The CEUS faculty recognizes and appreciates Jamsheed’s many accomplishments as Chair, such as securing tenure-line positions in contemporary Central Asia and in Tibetan studies, bringing in funding and an endowment from the Tang Foundation, overseeing an external review, and supporting numerous faculty members through tenure and/or promotion: Őner Őzçelik (Associate Professor), Kate Graber (Associate Professor), Sibel Crum (Senior Lecturer), Elisa Räsänen (Senior Lecturer), Gulnisa Nazarova (Teaching Professor).
Greetings from the new chair!
I am honored to have the opportunity to greet you as the new Chair of Central Eurasian Studies (CEUS), a world leading department with a diverse array of faculty and students who are leaders in academic expertise on the vast heartland of Europe and Asia, extending from Northern Europe to East Asia and from the Baltic Sea and Siberia to the Persian Gulf and the Himalayas, covering a vast array of peoples, cultures and languages from diverse language families.
Although I’ve been in this position for just a few months, I’ve been in CEUS for over 10 years now, and am proud to call it home. The time that I have spent here has provided me with much collegiality and knowledge in different world areas, cultures and languages throughout the years, and I cannot think of a better home to serve. This diversity has been one reason why I chose to come to CEUS in the first place more than a decade ago and has informed much of my research, as well as my approach to administration and even life in general. There is no doubt that this coming year will continue to be an opportunity to further get to know you, develop new skills and work together in challenging times towards creating an even stronger CEUS. I have utmost confidence that our department will continue its robust academic expertise in this important – yet often overlooked – world region, and that we will share this expertise with other universities and countries by publishing ground-breaking research that transcends disciplines and areas, as well as by graduating students who will transcend us. I look forward to continuing my academic, professional and personal growth with all of you and directly contributing to the growth of CEUS. —Őner Őzçelik
Afghanistan
Various CEUS faculty members and students have responded to the momentous events of this summer, the US’s rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s seizure of power. In early September, Jamsheed Choksy organized a panel discussion, “Ramifications of the Taliban Re-Takeover of Afghanistan” with CEUS faculty members Nazif Shahrani, Marianne Kamp, Feisal Istrabadi, and Kemal Silay taking part, as well as colleagues from other IU departments. Not surprisingly, Nazif Shahrani has been in demand as a speaker, as for example in an extensive radio interview in August, and with recent events such as talks at the University of Illinois, and at the University of Nebraska.
CelCAR, the Center for Languages of the Central Asian Region, under the leadership of director Gulnisa Nazarova, reached out to connect speakers of Dari and Pashto with Afghans who were evacuated in the days following the fall of Kabul, and who came to Camp Atterbury, which is about an hour’s drive east from Bloomington; here is a link to HLS Dean Lee Feinstein’s op-ed piece on that effort. A number of CEUS students who have taken or are taking Shahyar Daneshgar‘s Persian language classes have been working with Afgan guests at Camp Atterbury. These include Audrey Killian and Jack Stewart. CEUS doctoral candidate Jenny Dubeansky spearheaded efforts to gather donations of clothing and other necessary goods for Afghans at Camp Atterbury, working with Team Rubicon, setting up an Amazon donation site, and expanding awareness of the organization that is spearheading Indiana’s resettlement efforts, Exodus Refugee. Shahyar Daneshgar notes that, having taught Persian to students in a program that receives considerable funding from taxpayer dollars, it is gratifying to see students put their language knowledge into action in such an important and meaningful way.
Faculty news
The CEUS faculty increased in Fall 2021. Sam Bass was appointed as Visiting Assistant Professor of Mongol Studies. Eveline Washul joined the faculty as Assistant Professor of Tibetan Studies. Michael Brose was appointed Professor of Practice, and Feisal Istrabadi was named the Michael and Laurie Burns McRobbie Professor in Global Strategic Studies. Árpád Hornyák is visiting on a Hungarian Fulbright, and Moldir Orozbayeva and Aiperi Aitbaeva are visiting as Fulbright Language Teaching Assistants from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
One of Eveline Washul’s recent publications is “Introduction” to the April 2021 issue of Waxing Moon: a journal of Tibetan and Himalayan Studies. She presented “Indigeneity in Tibetan Contexts” for the East Asian Studies Center colloquium.
Kate Graber‘s book, Mixed Messages: Mediating Native Belonging in Asian Russia (Cornell 2020) earned honorable mention for the Davis Center Book Prize, presented at the ASEEES convention.
Chris Beckwith‘s co-written chapter on the Sythian Empire came out this year, though with a 2020 date. Timothy Taylor, Christine M. Havlicek, and C.I. Beckwith, “The Scythian Empire: Reassessing Steppe Power from Western and Eastern Perspectives”. In: St John Simpson, ed. Masters of the Steppe. Oxford: Archaeopress 2020, pp. 616-626. He gave a virtual talk, “Ancient Chinese capital city names and the change from Old Chinese to Middle Chinese,” Venue: The Research Center for Chinese Cultural Subjectivity, National Chengchi University, Taipei,Taiwan,
Gardner Bovingdon participated in an online symposium, “Continuing Threats to Uyghur Culture, Language and Identity,” presenting a talk, “Interpreting the Camps as Policy.” IU CEUS alum Tim Gross was also a presenter.
György Kara published a new interpretation of the 17th-century Mongol Prince Sagang’s long poem (70 quatrains) with ample commentary in Acta Orientalia Hung, 2021, (2) pp. 264-324.
Michael Brose was the main organizer and Program Committee Chair of the recent Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs annual conference that happened 29-31 October online. Because of the online venue for this year’s conference 166 people from seven countries and various locations in the US were able to join the conference.
Linguistics publications continue as Őner Őzçelik’s focus, this time published in a psychology journal: “L2 Acquisition of a complex stress pattern: UG-constrained learning paths in Khalkha Mongolian,” Frontiers in Psychology, August 2021.
Collaborations among language faculty have led to recent presentations by Piibi-Kai Kivik, Elisa Räsänen, and Sibel Crum. Kivik and Räsänen gave a talk entitled “Past learning in the spotlight: shared histories in classroom talk,” for the virtual 19th AILA World Congress “The dynamics of language, communication and culture in a changing world”, Groningen, the Netherlands. Crum and Kivik presented “Motivational Factors Affecting More and Less Commonly Taught Language Students,” for a workshop at the 53rd conference of Indiana Foreign Language Teacher Association, a professional organization of K-16 foreign language instructors.
Marianne Kamp‘s chapter on collectivization, “Collectivisation, Sedendarisation, and the Famine in Central Asia,” co-authored with Niccolò Pianciola, came out in the newly published Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Central Asia, (Routledge 2021) edited by Rico Isaacs and Erica Marat. Kamp gave a keynote talk, “Six Women from Xorazm: Memory, Collectivization, and Gender” for an October virtual conference called Turning Muslims into Comrades: Gendered Transformations of Muslim Lives in Socialist and Post-Socialist Contexts, hosted by Charles University in Prague.
Uranchimeg Tsultem is an Adjunct member of CEUS’s faculty, and an assistant professor at IUPUI. One of her recent publications is “Tradition in Baasanjav’s Art: Rethinking Buddhist Iconographies in Contemporary Mongolia” in Acta Mongolica: Special Issue: Mobility and Immobility in Mongolian Socities. http://ims.num.edu.mn/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/ACTA-Mongolica-Vol-19.pdf She was an invited presenter and discussant at a November workshop hosted by the University of Bern, on The Cult of Protector Deities at the Crossroads of Religion and Politics in Mongolia Today. Tsultem and IU lecturer Tserenchunt Legden were both involved in the Mongolian Society’s annual meeting, which took place in Indianapolis this fall.
László Borhi draws attention to the Tetmajer Translation Project that makes the work of Hungarian scholars available in English. There is a more thorough explanation of this endowed publication project in the Hungarian Studies Association newsletter
Ron Sela contributed a chapter to a festschrift honoring CEUS Professor Emeritus Devin DeWeese. The festschrift is titled From the Khan’s Oven: Studies on the History of Central Asian Religions in Honor of Devin DeWeese, published by Brill. The volume includes contributions by many CEUS alumni and faculty, and is edited by Allen J. Frank (PhD CEUS, 1994), Jeff Eden (MA CEUS, 2012), and Eren Tasar. Among the contributors are the three editors, Nick Walmsley (PhD CEUS, 2016); Daniel Beben (PhD CEUS/History, 2015), and noted scholars Stéphane A. Dudoignon, Jamal J. Elias, Peter B. Golden, Jo-Ann Gross, Michael Kemper, Jürgen Paul, and Paolo Sartori.
Jamsheed Chosky and Julian Kreidl’s article, Zoroastrian Deities in Bactria” came out in the Journal of Himalayan and Central Asian Studies, 25: 20-53.. Jamsheed and Carol Choksy contributed to Foreign Affairs, with an article entitled “Iran Needs the Nuclear Deal to Keep Russia and China at Bay.”
Gulnisa Nazarova and co-author Zulfiya Imyarova saw the publication of their work as “The repatriation policy of the USSR and the peculiarities of Uyghurs’ migration from the PRC in the 1950s,” Journal of Oriental Studies, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University of Volume 98, No 3, 2021
CEUS Student and Alumni news
New CEUS graduates include Zeynep Elbasan-Bozdogan, who defended her PhD dissertation, “The discursive transformation of a soul in exile: the unconventional nature of Cem Sultan’s poetry.” Also, Julian Kreidl defended his dissertation, “A Historical Grammar of Pashto.” Julian is currently working for CelCAR. Earlier in 2021, Hosung Shim defended his dissertation, “The State Formation of the Zungar Principality: a Political History of the Last Centralized State of the Eurasian Steppe.” Brian Cwiek defended his dissertation, “Sowing the Seeds of Change: State-building and Cotton Agriculture in Twentieth-Century Xinjiang.” Kurban Niyaz completed his doctoral dissertation, The Hidāyatnāma as the Shadow of the Āfāqiyya Path in East Turkistan (1653-1694). Dallin Day completed his MA thesis, “The role and function of Hungarian verbal prefixes,” supervised by Őner Őzçelik.
Current CEUS graduate students Mike Krautkraemer, Matt Hulstine, and Anton Ermakov presented papers at the virtual Central Eurasian Studies Society annual conference, on a panel, “Central Asian Voices in History: Letters, Divination Texts, and Boundaries of Belonging,” where Marianne Kamp was the organizer and discussant. Sadly, the internet let Dinara Abakirova down, making her planned paper presentation impossible.
The CEUS student organization, ACES, has new leadership as of September. President Ben Storsved, Vice Presidents: Daniil Kabotyanski and Nodira Ibragimova, Treasurers: Anton Ermakov and Stu McLaughlin, Secretary: Eduardo Acarón-Padilla, Faculty Representative: Daniil Kabotyanski. The ACES conference will take place, live and in person–as well as online, in February 2022!
Two CEUS MA students, Sam Robertson and Katharine Khamhaengwong, won national fellowships for international research. Khamhaengwong’s Fulbright fellowship is supporting her research about Muslim communities in the Republic of Georgia, while Sam Robertson (joint CEUS MA with Public Administration) has a Fulbright that supports his teaching at the State Law University in Tashkent, while he also does thesis research.
Emily Stranger, currently working on her dissertation, is working as the Regional Expertise and Culture (REC) Instructor for 1st Special Forces Command, 95th Civil Affairs Brigade, in Ft. Bragg, North Carolina.
Uzbek lecturer Malik Hodjaev is excited about his advanced students’ project-based learning, where they make use of materials in Uzbek as the basis for conference papers and dissertations. Matt Hulstine used Uzbek texts in his research on the Kokand Khanate, Jack Szczuka for his paper and musical composition on Alpomysh, and a University of Michigan grad student delved into the history of museums in Russian Turkestan. In addition, Hodjaev and Kamp are hoping that the first iteration of their CEUS study abroad class will take place in May (and won’t get derailed by Covid, as happened in 2020): a ten-day trip to Uzbekistan, with students studying language and history at Samarkand Institute of Foreign Languages, and travelling to Bukhara and Tashkent.
Brian Cweik has a position as Program Officer for the Africa and International regions, associated with the National Resource Center and FLAS portion of Title VI programs that are managed by the US Department of Education’s International and Foreign Language Education office. He is putting to use this area of expertise, earned through a few years of working with Kasia Rydel-Johnston in IAUNRC. He writes, “My team is responsible for conducting the NRC and FLAS grant competitions, providing technical assistance to grantees, and ensuring compliance with all regulations related to these programs.”
CEUS alum Filiz Cicek, PhD, published a book chapter, “Engendering Orientalism: Fatih Akin’s Head-On and The Edge of Heaven” in Handbook of Research on Contemporary Approaches to Orientalism in Media and Beyond (2 Volumes), edited by Işıl Tombul and Gülşah Sarı, IGI Global.
CEUS alum Dr. YU Wonsoo, Professor of the Korean National University in Seoul, was awarded with the Pole Star Order of Mongolia for his merits in Mongol studies. He published his Korean translations of the Secret History of the Mongols, of the Geser Saga, and of Lodoidamba’s novel The Limpid Tamir River, books on Xinjiang Daur and the Kamnigan language of North Mongolia.
Fundraising
Every department at any university always tries to raise funds, and CEUS is no exception. We welcome your end-of-year donations! Please consider making a donation of any size to CEUS. You can do so through the IU Foundation portal for CEUS: Make a Gift (myiu.org)
Include a message that can direct your donation to one of the Department priorities, such as supporting undergraduate scholarships and study abroad, or graduate scholarships and research funds, or for a specific area, such as the Elliott Sperling memorial fund for Tibetan Studies.
Comments and Contact
To leave a comments, you will need to provide your name and email. All comments will be embargoed until approved by the editor
To contact the editor with news: send email to mkamp (at) indiana.edu Make sure that your subject line references the CEUS newsletter.
Editor: Marianne Kamp, Associate Professor, CEUS
Posted on by mkamp
Editor: Marianne Kamp, Associate Professor, CEUS
Sections: Faculty News, Student News, Alumni News, Fundraising
The lengthy hiatus of the CEUS newsletter is over. Here’s a quick version of CEUS history since the last issue of the newsletter. CEUS became part of the newly formed School of Global and International Studies (now the Hamilton Lugar School) in 2014, moving out of Goodbody Hall and into a new building conveniently located a few meters from Wells Library. CEUS added undergraduate major and minor programs to our better known graduate programs. And of course there have been retirements, new hires, graduations.
The year of Covid forced us to join the digital age at high speed. Faculty members have been teaching on Zoom and also offering a few small in-person classes. The third floor, where our offices are and our students traditionally congregate, has been nearly silent. No international visitors have graced CEUS with their presence, and all of our invited lectures have been virtual, enabling us to enjoy all sorts of academic riches, but depriving us of the opportunities to expand our scholarly networks through casual conversations and over shared food. However, talks sponsored by the department have attracted far larger audiences than we could dream of when events are live and in person. Zoomland knows no boundaries.
Faculty News
Professor Devin DeWeese retired in December 2019. Aziza Shanazarova, who studied with him and earned her PhD in 2019, hosted a recognition event that took advantage of our technologically interconnected world. Scholars from around the world, including many of DeWeese’s colleagues from Uzbekistan and his students, sent in videos that celebrated his many achievements.
Assistant Professor Kate Graber’s book, Mixed Messages: Mediating Native Belonging in Asian Russia, was published in 2020 by Cornell University Press, and Kate has been busy with book talks. Here is Kate’s talk for Columbia University’s Harriman Institute https://harriman.columbia.edu/event/virtual-event-kathryn-e-graber and her book talk as a podcast for “The Slavic Connexion.” https://www.slavxradio.com/graber
Elisa Rasanen published an article that draws on her experience in teaching Finnish in CEUS, using collaborative chats and blended learning pedagogies that are especially relevant for teaching that adapts to Covid circumstances. Räsänen, E. & Muhonen, A. “Moi moi! Te olette siistejä!”: Chattailyä, itsestä kertomista ja yhteisöllisyyttä pohjoisamerikkalaisissa suomen ohjelmissa. (”Bye bye! You are cool!” Chatting, sharing about oneself and community building in North American Finnish programs.) In Latomaa, S. & Lauranto, Y. (edit.) 2020 p. 82-96. https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/317706
Jamsheed Choksy has been dividing his time between working on pre-Islamic Iran topics, considering the state of area studies, and speaking to current issues. His article “Friendship in Pre-Islamic Iranian Writings,” appears in Friendship in Islamic Ethics and World Politics. https://www.press.umich.edu/11300847/friendship_in_islamic_ethics_and_world_politics In November 2020, he spoke to the Naval Postgraduate College in one of his many recent public talks: “Beyond the JCPOA: Iran and the US.”
Lazlo Borhi investigates the hidden relationship between D-Day, Hungary’s secret attempt to change sides in WWII, the German occupation of Hungary and the Holocaust, in “The Allies, Secret Talks and the German Invasion of Hungary, 1943-1944” in Hungarian Studies Review http://hungarianstudies.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/HSR-Vol-46-47-2019-2020.pdf
Michael Brose and his colleague Su Min published a chapter on Muslim halal commerce in China, “Pedagogy as Marketing: Halal E-Commerce in Yunnan,” in a volume entitled Ethnographies of Islam in China. https://uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/ethnographies-of-islam-in-china/
A chapter by Chris Beckwith, “Vihāras in the Kushan Empire” came out in The Limits of Empire in Ancient Afghanistan: Rule and Resistance in the Hindu Kush, circa 600 bce – 600 ce. https://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/titel_6606.ahtml
Marianne Kamp’s article on oral history, “Oral History: American Schools of Thought, and an American’s Research in Uzbekistan,” was published in O’zbekiston Tarixi, 2020/3: 126-136. In May she gave a Zoom talk based on oral histories of collectivization in Uzbekistan, for the American University of Central Asia’s Anthropology Club: “If they didn’t pay, why would anyone have worked?”
Gulnisa Nazarova gave an interview on Uyghur language for Uyghur National TV.
Gyorgy Kara published an article racing the Mongol and Tibetan sources of some of the quatrains of the Ordos Prince Sagang’s maxims written for his clansmen. “On some sources of Sagang Sechen’s Teachings (1662)” in Acta Orient. Hung. 73 (2020), 605-617. https://akjournals.com/view/journals/062/062-overview.xml
Transeurasian languages are well known for ambiguous verb+verb sequences. Öner Özçelik authored a chapter on ambiguous verb sequences in Turkic languages, presenting a phonological analysis: Özçelik, Öner. 2020. “A formal phonological and acoustic analysis of verb sequences in Turkic languages”, 223-233 in a volume on ambiguous verb sequences: https://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/title_6513.ahtml
Toivo Raun served as the external examiner for a Ph.D defense at the University of Helsinki for Elina Pallasvirta. The title of her dissertation is Transatlanttinen fennougristiikka: Suomalais-Yhdysvaltalaiset suhteet ja tieteenalan kehitys toisesta maailmasodasta 1960-luvulle (Transatlantic Finno-Ugristics: Finnish-American Relations in the Field of Finno-Ugric Linguistics from the Second World War to the 1960s).
This is nothing like an exhaustive list of faculty activities: expect to hear about others in the next iteration of the newsletter.
In Memory of Professor İlhan Başgöz
Professor Başgöz, who taught generations of students Turkish folklore, oral literature, passed away on April 13, 2021, at age 99. A fuller account of his career will be published in the next edition of the newsletter. Those who knew him and studied with him are invited to send in their memories and tributes.
News about CEUS Students
With leadership from CEUS grad students Sam Robertson, Corinna Fuller, Katharine Khamhaengwong, Anton Emakov, and Ardahbek Amantur, the amazing Association of Central Eurasian Students, CEUS’s grad student organization, successfully moved the 2021 edition of their annual conference to an all online format. For details, see the ACES website: https://aces.sitehost.iu.edu/
Kenny Linden, doctoral candidate, has given numerous presentations on his dissertation, including “Zud, and Wolves: Environmental and Animal History of Collectivization in Mongolia” “at” the University of Cambridge’s renowned Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit (MIASU). https://www.miasu.socanth.cam.ac.uk/events/seminar-23-february-kenneth-linden
Joey Cleveland was awarded a Fulbright-Hays to complete his dissertation research in Mongolia in 2020-21, or when the pandemic allows. Joey’s dissertation research in Mongolia examines infrastructure breakdowns in postsocialism, focusing on the provision of hot water. His project will investigate how infrastructure such as sidewalks and public utilities—and especially their absence or breakdown—mediate political subjectivity.
Jennifer Dubeansky, doctoral candidate, co-authored an article with Jamsheed Choksy: “Ancient Iranian Stamp Seals in the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum,” in Dinars and Dirhams: Festschrift in Honor of Michael Bates. https://brill.com/view/title/59864
Emily Stranger, doctoral candidate, published an article based on her MA research: : “Iran’s Fire Ant Warfare,” Real Clear World, https://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2020/01/10/irans_fire_ant_warfare_212157.html
Mustafa Durmaz, CEUS PhD student, has recently completed authoring an ‘Introductory Kurmanji (Kurdish)’ textbook, working with CeLCAR under Öner Özçelik’s supervision.
Jessica Storey-Nagy was awarded the REEI Mellon Endowment Dissertation Write-up Fellowship for 2021-2022.
Two CEUS doctoral students finished their PhDs in 2020: Kwang Tae Lee, writing about 19th century Central Asia; and Xuan Li, on Tibet in the Reforms of the 1980s. Here’s a link to the Alumni page, where you can find the complete titles of their dissertations. https://ceus.indiana.edu/alumni/index.html
Three CEUS graduate students earned MA degrees in 2020: Keith Seeley, writing on the Kitan Liao state; Mustafa Aksu, writing about Uyghur labor, migration and cultural challenges; Shafiq Mubarak, writing about a peace deal for Afghanistan; Ismet Herdem, writing about Turkish Hezbollah.
CEUS has seen increasing numbers of undergraduate majors. Here is a list of recent graduates who completed a CEUS major, for Fall 2019, Spring 2020, and Fall 2020: Owen Adams, Alex Combs, Andrew Cotton, Max DeMar, Nikhil Jain, Ian Riley, Nick Schaffer, Jack Stewart, Quentin Swaryczewski. Students who minored in CEUS and graduated in 2020 include Rylan Deer, Kavya Gandra, Andrew Greco, and Andrew Hest.
This list may not be complete, and editor hopes that any graduate of CEUS whose name was inadvertently left out will get in touch and provide a correction. The Spring 2021 graduation list will be included in the fall edition of this newsletter.
Alumni Notes
Alumni notes in this edition of the newsletter come from comments sent to the editor by faculty members. We hope that alumni will write in and share some news about your own lives and accomplishments.
Nicole Willock (2011) published her work on Tibetan polymaths: https://cup.columbia.edu/book/lineages-of-the-literary/9780231197076
Aziza Shanazarova (2019) had her critical edition of a Central Asian Sufi woman’s story published: https://cup.columbia.edu/book/lineages-of-the-literary/9780231197076
Tim Grose’s (2014) book on the Xinjiang Class won the Central Eurasian Studies Society’s book prize: http://thecessblog.com/2020/10/author-interview-2/
Thomas Cooper (2003) is now a leading translator of Hungarian poetry and prose.
Prof. Dr. Tsuguhito Takeuchi (1951-2021) passed away in April 2021. He was an acclaimed linguist and philologist of the Tibetan language, especially Old Tibetan documents. His doctoral dissertation from Indiana University was published as a book entitled Old Tibetan Contracts from Central Asia (by Daizo Shuppan), which has been widely cited by many Tibetanists. He constructed an online database for Old Tibetan documents, cataloging wooden slips preserved in the British Library, and deciphering the documents of the Zhangzhung language. He taught English, Japanese, and Tibetan linguistics at Kinki University and at Kyoto University of Education and Kobe City University of Foreign Studies.
Fundraising
Every department at any university always tries to raise funds, and CEUS is no exception. We celebrate a recent announcement that the Tang Foundation will endow a professorship in CEUS for Silk Road Studies!
Please consider making a donation of any size to CEUS. You can do so through the IU Foundation portal for CEUS: Make a Gift (myiu.org)
Include a message that can direct your donation to one of the Department priorities, such as supporting undergraduate scholarships and study abroad, or graduate scholarships and research funds, or for a specific area, such as the Elliott Sperling memorial fund for Tibetan Studies.
Comments and Contacts
To leave a comments, you will need to provide your name and email. All comments will be embargoed until approved by the editor
To contact the editor with news: send email to mkamp (at) indiana.edu Make sure that your subject line references the CEUS newsletter