CESSI Updates | June 2025
|
|
|
|
Happy June from the Central Eurasian Studies Summer Institute! This week, we welcomed our CESSI language instructors for a pre-service orientation. We are fortunate to have the experience and talent of four returning instructors: Gulnara Glowacki (elementary Kazakh), Raushan Myrzabekova (intermediate Kazakh), Mahire Yakup (elementary Uyghur) and Akbar Amat (intermediate and advanced Uyghur). Classes start next week, on June 16, 2025, and we are excited to welcome 16 students who will be studying Kazakh and Uyghur intensively this summer.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
CESSI 2025 Student and CREECA Lecturer Spotlight
We love to hear from former students, instructors, and other friends of CESSI and CREECA, and share how they are using their language and area studies skills and expertise. In this issue, we spotlight an article in the April 2025 volume of the journal The Russian Review: “Critical Climate Histories of Eurasia: An Introduction” by historians Andy Bruno (who gave the first CREECA lecture of fall 2023) and Pei-Yi Chu (studying Kazakh in CESSI 2025). Their piece serves as an introduction to a cluster of articles on critical climate histories of Eurasia in Volume 84, Issue 2 of The Russian Review. (Full online access to the issue is available to UW-Madison students, faculty, and staff through UW Libraries.) To view the abstract, click here. Congratulations to Pey-Yi and Andy!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
ADDITIONAL EVENTS & OPPORTUNITIES OF NOTE
|
|
|
|
Online Workshop: Histories of Museum Assets and Ownership in the Eastern Bloc
The Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES) at Södertörn University (Sweden) is holding an online workshop on “Histories of Museum Assets and Ownership in the Eastern Bloc” on Friday, June 13, 2025 from 2:00 to 6:00 pm CET (7:00-11:00 am CDT). The workshop focuses on how Communist-era regimes in Eastern Europe and Central Asia reshaped cultural heritage through nationalization, confiscation, and restitution of museum collections. Cases span Poland to Uzbekistan. To register for Zoom attendance, click here. Please forward all inquiries and questions to Maria Silina at mariia.silina@sh.se
|
|
|
|
Call for Proposals:
Central Eurasian Studies Society (CESS) Annual Conference
In fall 2025, CESS will be running a smaller conference in advance of the larger meeting of the Association of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), in Washington, DC. The one-day CESS2025GWU conference will take place on November 19, 2025, and will be hosted by the Central Asia Program at George Washington University in Washington, DC. This is an in-person event, although members who aren’t able to travel to Washington will be able to follow the event remotely and pose questions to panelists. Additionally, CESS will also organize a virtual meeting on November 14-15, 2025, CESS2025online, for those who cannot travel to Washington. More information on the conference can be accessed here, while submission guidelines can be viewed here.
|
|
Panel proposals are due June 22, 2025.
Paper proposals are due July 20, 2025.
|
|
|
|
Call for Proposals: “Academic Freedom in Flux: Purpose, Beneficiaries, and Practices in the Contemporary World”
This conference on academic freedom organized by the Center for Independent Social Research and the Central Asia Program at George Washington University will be held at the Tashkent State University of Economics October 16-18, 2025. The entire conference will be conducted in English. They welcome applications for individual contributions, including the title, a brief description (up to 200 words), and a short academic biography of the presenter (approximately 100 words).
|
|
For more information, see here. To apply, click here. The application deadline is June 30, 2025.
|
|
|
|
Call for Contributions:
The Archive Revisited Gazette
Contributions are invited for a special issue of The Archive Revisited Gazette focused on Audre Lorde’s lesser-known essay, “Notes on a Trip to Russia.” This issue warmly welcome submissions from anyone interested in engaging with this essay. The first issue of the Gazette can be viewed here.
Written after her 1976 journey to Soviet Eurasia—including her participation in the Afro-Asian Writers Conference in Tashkent—Lorde’s essay offers a glimpse into her transnational political imagination, her encounters with Central Asian women and Indigenous poets such as Antonina Kymytval’, and her reflections on language, intimacy, and solidarity.
Deadline for submissions: July 1, 2025
|
|
|
|
THANK YOU, CESSI CONSORTIUM MEMBERS!
|
The Central Eurasian Studies Summer Institute was founded in 2011 by a consortium of international and area studies centers at major U.S. universities. We're grateful for the support of these current members: Columbia University's Harriman Institute | George Washington University's Central Asia Program and Sigur Center for Asian Studies | Harvard University's Davis Center for Russian & Eurasian Studies | Michigan State University's Asian Studies Center and Center for European, Russian, & Eurasian Studies | The Ohio State University's East Asian Studies Center and Center for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies | Stanford University's Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies | University of California-Berkeley's Institute of Slavic, East European, & Eurasian Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, and Tang Center for Silk Road Studies | University of Kansas' Center for East Asian Studies and Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies | University of Pittsburgh's Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies | University of Washington's Center for Global Studies and East Asia Center | University of Wisconsin-Madison's Center for Russia, East Europe, & Central Asia and Center for East Asian Studies
|
|
|
|
|
