12 February 2009

University Studies Introduce Central Asia to Americans

Indiana University among U.S. leaders in Central Asia studies

The Center for Languages of the Central Asian Region promotes study of Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Pashto, Tajik, Turkmen, Uyghur and Uzbek.

By Carlos Aranaga
Staff Writer

Washington — In the American heartland, young scholars study the life, languages and culture of the people of the heartland of Eurasia.

Indiana University at Bloomington, with graduate and undergraduate courses at its Central Eurasian Studies Department, has been a nexus for study of Central Asia since 1943, when it began as a U.S. Army specialized training program in Central Eurasian languages.

Today, Indiana offers language and academic studies and overseas study and employs a multidisciplinary faculty. Among the languages taught are Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Pashto, Tajik, Turkmen, Uyghur and Uzbek.

Professor Christopher Atwood, Indiana University’s department chairman, says: “Students come to Central Asian studies from many backgrounds and academic disciplines. We have former Peace Corps volunteers, anthropologists — some with a purely intellectual interest and others with a public policy focus hoping to work in foreign affairs.”

Often, says Atwood, students come to Central Asian studies from Russian studies. He works to impress on his students how Central Asian republics cannot be understood only through the prism of their former Soviet legacy. Atwood says: “There is a strong link to the pre-Soviet past; the cultural patterns are very distinct from that of the Russians. Seeing it only through a Russian lens does not work.”

With this in mind, Indiana University offers courses in Central Asian history, culture, politics and languages. Says Atwood, “The Russian language still functions as a regional [common language], but nonetheless there is a very strong consciousness of the pre-Russian background in the post-Soviet independent Central Asian republics.”

Indiana’s Central Asian focus fosters groups composed of students interested in the region and students from the region. There is a Central Eurasian Students Association that hosts its own annual academic conference, and also a Kazakh Student Association that organizes social and cultural gatherings to help the wider community learn more about Kazakhstan.

Central Asia scholars and courses on the region are also found at other U.S. universities. In 2000, the Central Eurasian Studies Society (CESS) was formed as an umbrella group for scholars and institutions interested in academic and field studies in the Eurasian region, which stretches from the Black Sea to Mongolia, and includes the five former-Soviet Central Asian republics.

CESS members include Harvard University’s Program on Central Asia and the Caucasus; the University of Wisconsin (Madison) Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia; and the University of California (Berkeley) Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. Since 2000, CESS has held annual conferences in North America, and a regional meeting in Kyrgyzstan.

The society also publishes a journal and presents annual awards, with the prizes in alternating years going to the best book on Central Asian history and the humanities and to the best book in the social sciences arena. The latest winner was Marianne Kamp from the University of Wyoming for her book The New Woman in Uzbekistan: Islam, Modernity, and Unveiling under Communism. CESS also presents an annual prize for the best undergraduate paper.

The United States long has recognized that understanding the world is in its long-term national interest. The U.S. Department of Education funds programs to support area and language studies, including establishment of national resource centers at universities around the United States. Indiana University is a U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant institution whose Central Asia study program is dedicated to increasing understanding of all aspects of the diverse region and peoples of Eurasia.

At the University of California’s Berkeley Program in Eurasian and East European Studies, professor Edward Walker, Caucasus and Central Asia program director, says that Title VI grant programs are of ongoing importance for the financial support they give to students who study a wide range of countries and languages at Berkeley.

Indiana University’s professor William Fierman, a political scientist with long experience in the region, says that of all Title VI national resource centers, Indiana University is the only one with Central Asian studies as its core. Fierman, fluent in Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uzbek and Russian, specializes in Central Asian politics, particularly policies affecting official languages, Islam and national identities.

Fierman, who has been instrumental in the continued vitality of the Central Asia program at Indiana, also cites the human ties that make the Central Asian link to Bloomington more than an academic exercise. Since 1997, returned Peace Corps volunteers and students from the region have organized a spring Navruz New Year’s festival, the largest such celebration in the Midwest. An event highlight was a pilaf cook-off, with Kazakh, Tajik, Turkmen and Uzbek teams.

More information on the Indiana University program is available on the university Web site.