Lecture by Ellen R. Welch of UNC Chapel Hill.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the independence of the former Soviet Central Asian republics, public Islamic religiosity has proliferated; mosques have been constructed, forms of pious dress newly adopted, and previously-proscribed religious texts published. In Tajikistan, Sufi circles have been at the center of this so-called “Islamic revival.” I will discuss stories Sufis in Tajikistan tell about saints, both in oral narratives and print. In particular, I will describe the case of Mavlavi Jununi, a 19th-century poet and Sufi shaykh. During Jununi’s own lifetime and later during the Soviet period, his body of work was unknown save to his own disciples and immediate family. Now, chapbooks of his verse can be found in bookstalls all over the country. Among Sufis, Jununi’s poetry is often held in as high esteem as that of the classical Persian masters. I argue that figures like Jununi legitimate relatively new projects of Islamic piety. Stories about Jununi and others like him have created new notions of what it means to be Muslim in Central Asia after the enormity of Soviet disjuncture.



Sponsored by World Religions program and MCLLC.

Enjoy delicious Chinese food while attending a viewing of Dying to Survive. The movie will begin promptly at 6 p.m. in the Gatton Student Center Cinema. 

Turn your new year wish into beautiful Chinese characters by making bookmarks. The event will be held from 9 a.m.-noon at the 2nd floor entrance to the Gatton Student Center. 

As the 2020 presidential election nears, we are facing strident and sometimes hate-filled campaign verbiage, even in the most mainstream of publications.  As was true in 2016, many observers express surprise at the coarseness of the language of the campaign. It is worthwhile to compare the rhetoric of the recent campaigns with those in 2008 and 2012 when Barack Obama and his family were also subject to outrageous accusations, although in these elections, the attacks rarely surfaced in the respectable press outlets.  As a result, many political watchers assumed that they represented fringe points of view that would never enjoy respectability. This paper will make the case that such observers were wrong.

Patricia A. Turner is the Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education and a Professor in the Department of African American Studies and World Arts and Culture at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research focuses on racial dynamics as they surface in folklore and popular culture. Her fourth book, Crafted Lives: Stories and Studies of African-American Quilters was published by University of Mississippi Press in 2009. She is also the author of Whispers on the Color Line: Rumor and Race in America (with Gary Alan Fine) (2004), Ceramic Uncles and Celluloid Mammies: Black Images and Their Influence on Culture (2002), I Heard It Through the Grapevine: Rumor in African-American Culture (1994). She is currently writing a monograph on legends and beliefs about Barack and Michelle Obama.

On Monday, December 9th at 5pm the Russian Singing Concert will take place in the Niles Gallery in the Fine Arts Library. This event is free and open to the public. Russian Tea and Russian delicious food will be provided. 

Arai Takako is the author of previous poetry collections, including Tamashii dansu [Soul Dance] which won the 2008 Oguma Hideo Prize. Since 1998, she has been an editor for the poetry journal Mi’Te; she has also edited a volume of poems about, and is producing a film connected to, the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in northern Japan. Arai teaches Japanese and poetry at Saitama University. She is currently participating in the 2019 University of Iowa International Writing Program.

Professor Linkhoeva will present her research on colonial policies by the Soviet and Japanese regimes on the Mongolian territories (Buriatia, Outer and Inner Mongolia). The historiographical division between the communist bloc (Russia/Buriatia/Outer Mongolia/communist China) and the anticommunist bloc (Japan/Inner Mongolia/Manchuria/Republican China) has precluded identifying strategies and policies that great powers, regardless of their ideological preferences, deploy in dealing with “small people” caught in the regional power struggles. The talk shifts away from these national/ist perspectives and places compartmentalized experiences of the borderland people, the Buriat-Mongols, in the center of a history.

Dr. Tatiana Linkhoeva is Assistant Professor of Japanese History at New York University. Her forthcoming book, Revolution Goes East. Imperial Japan and Soviet Communism will be published by Cornell University Press in March 2020. 

Native of the republic of Buriatia (Russia), Dr. Linkhoeva graduated from Moscow State University, received her MA from the University of Tokyo, and PhD in History from UC Berkeley. She has been awarded fellowships from Japan’s Ministry of Education, the Japan Foundation, UC Berkeley, and the German Excellence Initiative.