CEUS Colloquia
2008 - 2009 Schedule 2009 - 2010 Schedule
The Central Eurasian Studies Colloquium is an annual project hosted by the Sinor Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies and supported by additional funding from the Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center and the Central Eurasian Studies Department. The colloquium was conceived by Professor Christopher Beckwith and began during the 2008-2009 academic year. Its initial raison d’etre was to provide a forum for informal discussion of the current research of Indiana University faculty pursuing themes relating to the history and culture of past and contemporary societies within the territory of Central Eurasia, a space that includes Central Asia proper, the Volga-Ural region and Siberia, the Caucasus and Black Sea region, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Mongolia, and Tibet. Beginning in 2009-2010 we are modifying the profile of the colloquium in two ways: first, by also inviting speakers from outside IU, and second, by selecting an annual theme that will link at least four of the speakers, two in each of the fall and spring semesters. For the 2009 - 2010 academic year, our theme will be “Archaeological Explorations of Central Eurasia.”
September 23: Renata Holod (University of Pennsylvania) “Trading and Raiding on the Eurasian Steppe: The Grave Goods of a Turkic Chieftain”
October 7: Michael Frachetti (Washington University) “The Process of Pasturalism in Eurasia: A Mountain View to the Steppes”
November 4: Gardner Bovingdon (Indiana University) “Ürümchi’s Hot July”
January 20: Paul Losensky (Indiana University) “The Ghazals of Amir Khusraw”
January 27: Nicole Willock (Indiana University) “New Approaches in Tibetan Studies: Studying the life of A lags Tshe tan zhabs drung”
February 3: Anne Pyburn (Indiana University) “Chinggis Khan or Santa Claus: Choosing a Heritage for Kyrgyzstan”
February 17: Cholpon Turdalieva (American University of Central Asia)
“Kyrgyz Identity through the Lens of 19th-Century Travelogues”February 24: Tristra Newyear (Indiana University) “Early Buryat Theater and the Drama of Literacy”
March 10: David Anthony (Hartwick College) “The Archaeology of Indo-European Origins”
March 31: Elliot Sperling (Indiana University) “Tanguts on the Tibetan Plateau”
April 14: David Somfai Kara (Hungarian Academy of Sciences) “Popular Islam among Post-Soviet Kazakh and Kirghiz“
October 15: Christopher I. Beckwith “The Central Eurasian Culture Complex: Engine of Dynamic Change in Pre-Medieval Japan, France, and Tibet”
October 29: Ágnes Fülemile “Royalties, Nobles and Burgers in National Dress – Pageantry and Competing ‘Displays’ of Legitimacy in the Last Empires of Europe: The Case of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy”
November 12: Christopher I. Beckwith “Scholastic Argument Structure in Medieval Central Asian Philosophical Texts”
December 3: Erdem Cipa “Selim the ‘Grim’: What’s in a Nickname?”
January 21: Chris Atwood “Ouyang Xiu, Rudi Lindner, and the Turco-Sogdians of Inner Mongolia: Some Notes from the History of ‘Tribalism’ on China’s Inner Asian Frontier”
February 4: Christiane Gruber “Real Absence: Picturing God in Islamic Art”
February 18: Martin Spechler “Is Russia Winning in Central Asia?”
Bregel Lecture
November 11, 2009: John Woods (University of Chicago) “Framing the Timurid Aristocratic Order”
November 1, 2007: Maria Subtelny (University of Toronto) “Timurid Custom and Chinggisid Law: Continuity and Innovation”
March 29, 2006: Charles Melville “Creating an Image of Chinggis Khan”
Symposia
text coming soon
Documenting Turkic Language Satire
text coming soon
Family & Society in Turkic Central Eurasia
text coming soon
Regulating Islam for God and Tsar
text coming soon
Historical Mapping
text coming soon
Past Activities
Major research efforts undertaken by the RIFIAS have included projects that produced the Modern Mongolian-English Dictionary, edited by John G. Hangin; John R. Krueger's Tuvan Manual (both works are published in the Uralic and Altaic Series); and Yuri Bregel's edition and English translation of the 19th-century Khivan chronicle in Chaghatay Turkic, Firdaws al-Iqbal (published by Brill in 1988 [text] and 1999 [translation]).
By far the largest project undertaken through the RIFIAS to date has been the Bibliography of Islamic Central Asia, edited by Yuri Bregel. The project, funded initially by the National Council for Soviet and East European Research, involved the efforts of scholars at Indiana University and at cooperating institutions in the U.S., Europe, and Russia. Parallel with the compilation of the bibliography, the RIFIAS acquired and cataloged a massive collection of microfilms and photocopies of publications and manuscripts, the Central Asian Archives. The three-volume bibliography, published in 1995, comprises over 30,000 entries on the history and civilization of Islamic Central Asia down to 1917, arranged by subject.
In the 1990s, Rockefeller Foundation Humanities Fellows resided in Bloomington and used the RIFIAS to undertake substantial study of previously unpublished, and in many cases previously unknown, source material on Inner Asia's history and culture. Publications resulting from these projects include The Life of 'Alimqul: A Native Chronicle of Nineteenth Century Central Asia, edited and translated into English by Timur K. Beisembiev (RoutledgeCurzon 2003).
The RIFIAS Library continually acqu`ires and makes available publications and other research materials on Inner Asia, both new and out-of-print. The Library's catalog became available on line in 2003. Currently the RIFIAS is participating in a major project to digitize and post on-line copies of the bulk of its Central Asian Archives holdings, with financial and technical support form the Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center and the Digital Library Program. The RIFIAS also organizes conferences, lectures, and other activities connected with Inner Asian studies on an on-going basis.