My first (of hopefully) many installments of graduate student/early career academic profiles highlights an old friend and classmate: Kenny Liden. @Kenny_Linden is a PhD candidate in @iu_ceus who researches environmental and animal history in #Mongolia. #enviormentalism#Fulbright
Specifically, Kenny is examining how the socio-political structures and new knowledge brought forth by Soviet-style socialism (especially collectivization) and veterinary science shaped and reshaped human interactions with their living environments.
Kenny is an accomplished scholar who has spent significant time in Mongolia. His dissertation is based primarily on archival work in Ulaanbaatar and Öwörkhangai province and on ethnography in Mongolian countryside. His research has been funded by Fulbright-Hays.
I look forward to following Kenny’s work and you should too! A bright future awaits! (and his encyclopedia-deep knowledge about everything Mongolia saved me when we co-TAed a course on the Secret History of the Mongols)
Today @pen_int highlights detained Prof. Rahile Dawut--one of the world's foremost scholars on Uyghur religious cultures. This thread begins to show just how important her work is (and why the CCP feels so threatened by this scholarship)
Prof Dawut's scholarship reaches many corners of Uyghur pious expression, but she is perhaps best known for her trailblazing work on sacred shrines, which are called mazar in Uyghur
Prof Dawut established deep trust among religious communities in the Tarim Basin, recorded their histories, practices, and published them for Uyghur and international audiences
Twitter is buzzing about Jiang's interview with @CNN. I've never interviewed Jiang, but here is what I can corroborate by the Chinese sources. 1: police were sometimes armed, and detainees were commonly hooded during transport
Some officers reported that they assisted in the detentions of hundreds of people each day
Many of these officers came from neidi (inner/eastern China) as part of the Aid Xinjiang 援疆 program. Their posts typically lasted three months
@GFPhilosophy I’m not sure who you are. But my wife’s sister is here so I’m kinda doing my own thing. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. What would you like me to explain? Why 土炕改造 is different in Uyghur communities from neidi?
@GFPhilosophy it's late, i want to go to sleep, so I'm going to assume that is the question. First, we cannot equate سۇپا with 土炕, although Chinese conflates the two. Supa is often the site for religio-social rites such as name-giving ceremonies and circumcisions. not the case in 内地
@GFPhilosophy although 土炕改造 is used in the 新疆民生 source I posted, it isn't it's own policy in the region. Rather it's part of the 三新活动. In Uyghur communities, authorities require families to tear down 拆除 or tear apart 拆 the supa. I.E., it cannot remain
After pausing for May [sorry, just ran out of gas], Scholar Profiles is back! This month: David Stroup @davidstroup, Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Chinese Politics at @UoMPolitics who specializes in #Hui (i.e., Chinese Muslim) ethnicity.
I recently read his 2020 article, “‘Why don’t you go to the mosque?’: the problem of epistemic deference in researching everyday ethnicity in Hui Muslim communities.” cambridge.org/core/journals/…
This month’s spotlight is being sent not a moment too soon. So much attention is being directed at undeserving "scholarship" on the #Uyghur region, that groundbreaking work is (maybe) going unnoticed. Enter Sär Tynen @sbtynen, a post-doc @Akademie_ved_CRcolorado.edu/geography/sara…
Tynen received their PhD in geography from the University of Colorado at Boulder and has published in several peer-reviewed journals including @Pol_Geog_Jl, @Geopolitics_Jl, @spaceandculture as well as edited volumes on urbanization Asia. Their book is under contract @ibtauris
I’ve been an admirer of Sär’s work for quite some time, but most recently read their 2020 @CA_Survey article “Dispossession and displacement of migrant workers: the impact of state terror and economic development on Uyghurs in urban Xinjiang” tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…
Let’s continue. To be honest, I’m not sure if this is a take on banknotes/nods to indigenous groups or language policy, but I’m going to treat it as an uninformed attempt to create a mirage hiding current language policy. Fact: Uyghur will, at best, become a “kitchen language”
The Party’s goal has been clear: all schools in Xinjiang are expected to adopt “mode 3” delivery—i.e., Chinese as the language of instruction (and using native languages only if necessary). (from Zuliyati Simayi, yes, this Zuliyatyi)
Some locales failed to meet the 2016 deadline, but are still expected to institute these changes, so they’ve dramatically increased the number of classroom hours spent on Chinese.