secretlyismaili

Actually the only book on the subject of Russia in inner Asia that I am reading is called China Marches West, but it has a lot of stuff about Russia since it's about both empires' expansion towards each other (centered mostly around 16th-18th centuris), the fixing of the borders, and the genocide of the Zunghar Mongol Khanate that they both succeeded in committing throughout the process. That book is by Peter Perdue. Unfortunately I've never really been too interested in Russia (and I know no Russian at all) except for what I have learned through exposure to Uzbek lit, but it would still be good to have a sense of how the social environments of Islam in post-Sovietia and China compare. You are right, Uzbek and Uyghur are close enough together in written form to really be mutually intelligible, though Uyghur has many Chinese words and Uzbek many more Persian and Russian words. In spoken form they are very different though - namely, Uyghurs seem to talk about twice as fast as Uzbeks. And then there's the vowel harmony...that's one Turkic trapping that Uzbek jettisoned during their Persification (to the learner's benefit). Adeeb Khalid I am familiar with, he spoke here last year, and thanks so much for the Prophet and Tsar recommendation. I have seen it on bookstore shelves but never invested. How about those Peter Hopkirk books, like Setting the East Ablaze? I thought it was good and entertaining. A rare combo. Ah, tales of high adventure on the steppe. Well, high adventure, yes, but also insane brutal war (is there any other kind?)

Wow, that's really awesome. I can imagine, though, patience coming in handy when trying to work through institutions like that! :-) My Uyghur teacher, who lived in Uzbekistan and studied in Moscow as well, told me that there was a lot of at least anti-Turkic sentiment that she encountered there. I guess I don't really know the distribution of non-Turkic Muslims in Russia...? I'm reading now about Russian eastward expansion into Siberia and the borders of a westward-expanding China, and there's a lot of religious nationalism in the Russian conquest narratives. Now I am curious to know more about Russia's post-Soviet religious world and how it is being reclaimed after decades of official atheism. So jelly you lived in Uzbekistan and of the prospect of going to Tajikistan....oof best of luck to you. Do people in Tajikistan, as in Uzbekistan, usually speak Russian as well as Tajik / Qyrghyz / Uzbek? Do you know Tajik?

That sounds sweet. Where did you do your research in Russia? God it would be so killer to go to Tajikistan. That's a really important question these days and I think of where all the Stans are going to be leaning and who their friends'll be once there (hopefully) is some opening up and a little bit of spring in the air inshallah. I've seen some Uzbek articles, but no real action, about the O'zbek Bahorasi (Uzbek Spring) and it'll be super mega important to understand how Tajikistan and its neighbors fit into the puzzle in the near future, so, good on you! Sounds great. Me, I'm hoping to study late Ming Islamic textual production in Nanjing, as well as aspects of Islamic textual transmission (of which there was a good ol' amount) between China and other parts of the "peripheral" Islamic world during the late 1500s and through the 1600s, like Bengal and Malaysia. One deal I am interested in looking at is how """culturally Chinese""" (in ultra carefulness quotes) Muslims wrote in Chinese about Islam as a universal spiritual system linking them with the rest of the ummah (global Islamic community, for anyone's info), and how Chineseness and Islamicness competed for top dog in their works. Specifically, in one place where there was a lot of textual transmission - the Turkic/Uyghur northwest (this is where Uzbek comes in - Uzbek/Uyghur are modern forms of Chaghatay which was used in what is now Xinjiang) - Muslims wrote about each other with varying attitudes, sometimes with mutual amity as Muslims, sometimes from a civilized-barbarian perspective, sometimes from a "true/false doctrine" perspective, and I just want to look at how that all worked! I love Islamic mystical theology. Oof I feel like every time I try to summarize my deal different things get emphasized. Ah so much excitement on the boards recently, maybe the most exciting of all being the bed intruder Gaston. All I can picture is him telling LeFou "you are so dumb. you are really dumb. for real"

poryshen and I did exchange a couple things about central Asia a furr piece back, but no I haven't seen anyone else who's applying to the Stans. I was thinking of applying to Uzbekistan, since that language/history (mostly pre-Sov, though) is one of my focuses, but didn't end up going for it. I know a guy who did an ETA in Qyrghyzystan last year who had a hella good time. Welcome! I hope you get into Tajikistan - Inner Asia would be an extremely interesting place to be these days. Can I ask what your project there is about?

Yeah for real, although I'm willing to give this forum the benefit of the doubt and blame it on touchscreen phone mishaps. What kind of maniac would dislike Zumba enthusiasm?

Glad to hear that you have Zumba-d your way into Croatia. Success!

Congrats man. Glad to see many of the long time forumers getting the news they wanted. Hope you have a hella good experience out in former al-Andalus ;-) I just realized that we China people are now within the historical timeframe during which announcements have gone out. Oy vey.

Hahaha thanks for this. I hope the fulbright people are actually stalking this forum and that their hearts are melted by your version.

sorry, that's "gang aft agley." Agley...a-glay...ake-lay...Akeley..Jonathan Akeley, East Asian Fulbright coordinator?!? What is happening to my MIND!?!?

Come ON, Eileen... no but seriously, waiting sucks. According to schedule, I have two more weeks, during which I plan to try to focus solely on my MA thesis. But the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft aglee.

I like to think that there's always a way to get what you want even out of a heavily bureaucratized situation. Even if it would be a faux pas, IMHO you should still take your girlfriend/de facto wife with you since, in the end, they'll just have to deal with it and you can probably find another place to live, maybe nicer than the tiny dorms. Do it for love! (maybe this is what Freddie Mercury was talking about when he sang "I'll look back on myself and say, I did it for love, love love love I did it for love!" Screw the naysayers.

Hey! Just bought it and I am figuring out all the ways it works. What do you mainly use it for? Seems good for practice, but has the chat/friending aspect worked out well for you?

Hilarious!!

Three cheers for all the new fulbrighters! The India people have probably moved on but I wanted to share this snippet of a quote from one-on-one Bengali class today: "so at that time the Baul movement started to get really strong..." And yeah Baul is pronounced in a most convenient way for this. Go ahead and try to keep a straight face when your teacher says that in all sincerity

Once that wanderlust bites you it's hard to say no.

Her face immediately contorted into a mixture of "do you know what you're saying?" And "you misogynistic jerkface..." Safe to say she wasn't impressed. Women do "hold up half the sky," after all.

I love misunderstandings like that. An elderly female Chinese neighbor asked me if I enjoyed cooking at home, and I casually replied "no - I don't have a wife" thinking that I was saying "I don't have a stove."

Oof, oy vey. I'd really like to know these things so I know what to fantasize about instead of writing a thesis. I hope to be in Nanjing.

I am with you. Waiting. 等一下，等一下。。。 I asked this but didn't hear anything back: if you had to apply for a Chinese gov't scholarship, and I think most people had to, do you think the possibility exists of getting rejected from fulb but getting the govt deal? That would still mean a year in china. But I don't know if it's possible. It's finally nice enough in Chicago to open up the windows! Beautiful!

One approach to bridging the gap between positivity and possibly false predictions of the future is just to add inshallah, "if God wills." "You are really smart and awesome!! You are sooo getting it, inshallah," meaning "yep you are smart but so are other people, so who knows...good luck!"

Haha...oh but once you do hear then people will all see the radiant glow emanating from your face, and they'll all say oh! you heard about your thing! and then you can tell them about your triumphant news.

Thanks. I guess I didn't mean just to draw attention to the fact that one should be careful when discussing politically sensitive topics in certain places...maybe I just wanted to complain about it. I know not to visit certain sites, not to express certain things, not to trust right off the bat the guy who claims to be my new friend. But that bothers me. That's all, and I am not looking forward to having to tacitly accept the official media position on, for example, Syria - a place I care and worry a lot about. That's what I meant about being ambivalent - I know my own thoughts have been constructed in an environment with its own political agenda, and so I will appreciate being in a setting where my own notions are challenged. But not to be able to be openly critical of state power will be difficult. Last time I was in China I pretty much kept my mouth shut about Xinjiang etc. and I know that that is necessary, but for how long? I mean in my own writing do I just accept that I can only write about China with caution and restraint for fear of joining the list of researchers who can't go back anymore? But on the other hand, there's the "tyranny of choice" where you can say whatever you want since it just gets swallowed up in all the other crazy opinions out there, and that alone renders it sort of impotent. I guess what I really want to say is, man oh man I could go for four or five steamed pork baozi right about now.

Sorry...just remembered that I think you said you're applying to Georgia.

Actually, after spending the whole day following Syrian uprising-related media, I have to confess to a certain ambivalence about living for 10 months in a country which is an ally of such a regime. Of course I would absolutely still go, but it makes me wonder what kind of conversations I'll have with people, what I'll have to be careful about on the Internet, and, even more so, what my own biases and privileges are. When I lived in Syria I saw firsthand the depth of the control over public discourse, and it makes me seethe to think about those methods of policing. I'm even reluctant to write freely here because who knows? maybe monitoring sites like this is part of the bureaucratic process for foreign scholars. Many Sinologists have been blacklisted for their publications. I know, that might be too paranoid. Russia people, maybe you know what I mean. Poryshen?

Don't cave! More people need to exist outside that forum which has become a sinister project in predatory capitalism.