Rewriting of the History: Emerging Identities and Nationalism in Central Asia

July 19-30, 2004

Course Director: Ablet Kamalov, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, Institute of Oriental Studies

Resource Persons:

• Touraj Atabaki, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam
• Ágnes Birtalan, University ELTE, Department of Inner Asian Studies
• Anuar Galiev, Academy of Labor and Social Relations, Almaty
• Dru C. Gladney, University of Hawaii at Manoa, School of Hawaiian, Asian, and Pacific Studies
• Colin Mackerras, Griffith University, School of International Business and Asian Studies
• H. B. Paksoy, Texas Tech University

The course will use interdisciplinary perspective to examine the phenomenon of Revising and Rewriting of the History in Central Asia. It will examine the roots of this phenomenon going back to the colonial time of print-capitalism, which fostered the emergence of 'imagined communities' in Central Asia and look at the problem from a theoretical point of view placing it rightly within the theoretical concepts existing in Historical Anthropology, Post-Colonial Studies and Area Studies.

The course will focus among others on such problems as the complex interplay between Invention and Mythologization of the History and Ethno-Nationalism as well as emerging new State based Identities. It will introduce the multifaceted debate on the nature of invention of the History and reveal its correlation with state building, politics, and political regimes and show the role of History Writing in social and cultural life of societies during the transition period. The comparative analysis of the History Writing process in Central Asian states with those in other post-Communist societies (Caucasus, Mongolia) as well as Chinese Central Asia (Xinjiang) will enable to reveal general tendencies in the process of Rewriting of the History and describe it as a natural phenomenon for the contemporary post-colonial societies. The course will give participants the skills necessary to apply academic theories, concepts and methodology to their own researches and curricula.