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CESSI Updates | July 2025
Happy July from the Central Eurasian Studies Summer Institute! Last month, we welcomed 16 students who have been studying Kazakh and Uyghur intensively this summer. The first semester of the summer concluded on Friday, July 11. In addition, students participated in a cultural presentation event spotlighted below!
 
Pictured above are students in the Intermediate Uyghur class. Students took turns coming up with statements about treating guests in Uyghur and other cultures: serving tea, exchanging gifts, and as pictured above, preferred seating at a meal. The learning went further as students discussed different superstitions in Uyghur and other cultures, including beliefs around appropriate and inappropriate gifts.
Pictured above are students in the Elementary Kazakh class at the start of Week 2, being led by senior lecturer Gulnara Glowacki in a Jeopardy-style game where they reviewed greetings, leave-takings, typical questions and answers, and various grammatical forms.
On Thursday, July 3, all CESSI students and instructors met in a combined class for a special session on cultural aspects of Kazakhstan, with an emphasis on tribalism and kinship practices, including the concept of the Zhuz or Jüz (translated as "horde" or "tribe"). Students in the Elementary Kazakh class collaborated on a presentation "Қазақ жүздері туралы/About Kazakh Zhuzes." Students in Intermediate Kazakh presented on "Қазақ рулары/Kazakh tribes" and "Жеті ата/Seven ancestors or Seven generations." Students from the Uyghur classes asked questions and everyone participated in a lively discussion about kinship practices. All the students of Kazakh were excited to share their knowledge and to interact with students from our Uyghur classes! The classes will meet jointly again on Friday, July 25 for a session on Uyghur life and culture.
CESSI SPOTLIGHTS
We were delighted to hear from CESSI alum Jake Zawlacki, who studied Kazakh in the summer of 2019 with Gulnara Glowacki. At that time, Jake had recently completed a Master’s in Russian, Eastern European and Eurasian Studies at Stanford University and received a FLAS to attend CESSI. Since then, Jake has been working on a translation of Ahmet Baitursynuly’s collection of poems, Mosquito. Published in 1911, and then expanded and republished in 1922, Mosquito consists of 36 poems ranging in length from six lines to over 150. Mosquito contains Baitursynuly’s most overtly political poems addressed to the yet-to-exist Kazakh nation. Jake’s translation of Mosquito is currently under contract with Academic Studies Press. To learn more about Jake's project or contribute to the subvention grant in support of the book’s publication, you can contact Jake Zawlacki at jazawlacki@gmail.com.
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ADDITIONAL EVENTS & OPPORTUNITIES OF NOTE
 
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.
Paper proposals are due July 20, 2025.
 
Call for Papers:
Journal of Global Postcolonial Studies -
Special Issue on Post-Soviet Postcolonial Studies

This journal calls for an inquiry of the current decolonial turn, build on existing scholarship and bring to the fore new postcolonial interventions, while also countering the pitfalls of the “decolonial bandwagon” (Moosavi) such as tokenism and uncritical use of decolonial terminology. They welcome contributions that critically engage with postcolonial and decolonial theory, attempt to bridge Western and local epistemologies, compare different geographical contexts of (post)coloniality, or untangle various types of decoloniality – including political, epistemological, cultural and aesthetic and others.

At this stage, those interested to contribute are asked to please email an abstract to the guest editor by 1 August 2025, in order to firm up the projected outline of the issue.

Deadline for abstract submissions: August 1
Manuscripts following the journal guidelines and formatted in MLA style should be submitted by September 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
 
Language Program Office–CESSI
 
 
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