Songs of Cotton and Nomads: Invented Traditions in Soviet and Post-Soviet Central Asia

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel examines several moments in the construction of Central Asian national culture in and beyond the Soviet period in literature, visual arts, celebrations, and music, focusing on traditions invented and/or molded to match sociopolitical realities. In these three papers, we ask how the construction/molding of local culture impacts the Central Asian national identity, imagination, and authenticity. If Arabic and Persian music was coopted to create Uzbek estrada in the 1950s, does that make it Uzbek? If a Kazakhstani Korean writer integrates himself into Kazakh nomadic literary tradition, does that make his work Kazakh? If Uzbek national ornaments featuring cotton bolls turn out to be invented by the Soviet regime to boost cotton production, does that make them any less “national” or beloved by the people? As certain traditions have become synonymous with Kazakh or Uzbek national culture, we both re-think their roots in a particular context and place and ask how this impacts our current relationship with them.

Sub Unit

• History: 1945-1990

Chair

• Taylor Zajicek, Williams College

Papers

• Nomadic Fashioning: Translation as Kazakh/Kazakhstani Mediation in the Kim- Auezov Encounter - Sophie Lee, UC Berkeley

• How Uzbek is the 'Arabic Tango'?: How 'Eastern' Estrada Became Uzbek - Leora Eisenberg, Harvard U

• Pahta Gul and Pahta Bairam: Cotton as a National Symbol and an Invented Tradition - Zukhra Kasimova, Bucknell U

Discussant

• Claire Nadine Roosien, Yale U