His 2012 book, Under Solomon’s Throne: Uzbek Visions of Renewal in Osh (University of Pittsburgh Press), concerns how ethnic Uzbeks in the ancient Silk Road city of Osh, Kyrgyzstan think about political authority and post-Soviet transformations, based on research using vernacular language interviews and ethnographic fieldwork of urban social life from 1993 to 2011.
Morgan Y. Liu is a cultural anthropologist studying Islamic revival, post-socialist states, and social justice movements. An Associate Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, The Ohio State University, he teaches about the Middle East, Central Asia, Islamic revival and social justice, and cultural theory. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Society of Fellows, Harvard University. His Ph.D. is from the University of Michigan in Anthropology
with Jeffery Werbock, Chairman of the Mugham Society of America
Jeffrey Werbock will present a program of instrumental solo improvisations based on traditional Azerbaijani mugham, played on oud – fretless wood face short neck lute; tar fretted skin face long neck lute; and kamancha- skin face spike fiddle.Mr. Werbock has been giving presentations for over three decades and has performed often at LincolnCenter, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History, World Music Institute,and presents lecture demonstrations at universities all over the English speaking world. He has been awarded an honorary degree by the National Music Conservatory of Azerbaijan, in Baku, and was recently sponsored by the Ministry of Culture of Azerbaijan to perform a solo concert.
A workshop held in conjunction with the exhibition “Nomads and Networks: The Ancient Art and Culture of Kazakhstan” currently at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in the Smithsonian Institution until December 2, 2012.
Nomadism has been a key aspect of culture in the Eurasian space, especially on the Kazakh steppes, throughout the centuries. The Russian colonization and the Soviet Union drastically transformed the Kazakh society in the 19th and 20th century. Since independence in 1991, the legacy of nomadism has been rehabilitated by the political authorities in their nation building schemes.
The society has also participated in reconstructing symbols of the nomadic past: they have become objects of memory and research, but also objects of artistic inspiration, and commercial branding. This workshop invites a team of experts to discuss the contemporary use of the concept of nomadism from various angles.
with Umut Korkut, Glasgow Caledonia University
Since the outbreak of the global financial crisis, the Hungarian right engaged in a collective soul searching on what formulates Hungarian identity. Dr. Korkut’s paper elaborates on the discourses of the Hungarian conservative and radical right-wing political and intellectual coalitions that Hungarians in terms of their language, culture, and identity fit better with Eurasia imagined as a geographic and a geopolitical entity.
Dr. Umut Korkut is a Reader in Politics at Glasgow School for Business and Society at Glasgow Caledonian University. He was been admitted to the degree of Doctor of Philosophy with magna cum laude at the Central European University in Budapest in 2004. He was awarded the “Doçent” title by the Turkish High Education Authority in 2009. His current research focus is broadly social policy, liberalization, religion and gender rights, migration, democratization and Europeanization in Central and Eastern Europe and Turkey. He will be a visiting fellow at Slavic and Russian Studies Centre at University of Hokkaido from June to September 2015.
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