New Program Director

The MA in Eurasian Studies is proud and happy to announce that Nikolay Tsyrempilov will take over the duties of programme director starting from August 2020.

Nikolay Tsyrempilov is an Associate Professor of History in the School of Sciences and Humanities, specialising in the history of Buddhism in Tibet, Mongolia, and Russia. He is an author and co-author of six monographs.  His latest monograph Under the Shadow of White Tara. Buriat Buddhists in the Russian Empire, the 18-early 20th century is forthcoming with Brill Academic Publishers. His work has appeared in Ab Imperio, Inner Asia, Buddhist Studies Review and many other peer-reviewed journals.

Join us in welcoming Nikolay in his new role!

Viva-voce examination – July 21, 4 p.m.

On July 22 at 4 p.m.,  Gulnara Miribayeva will be defending her thesis in a public viva-voce examination on zoom platform.

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Title: “Trapped between Misery and Joy.” Young Women’s Experience of Unintended Non-marital Pregnancy in Kazakhstan

 

This multiple case study focuses on young unwed mothers residing at the Mother’s House non-governmental organization. Based on the qualitative data collected during in-depth interviews and ethnographic observations at Mother’s Houses in Kostanay and Almaty, the study aims to examine the factors that bring unwed mothers to the facility. These factors are analyzed through the lens of honour and shame hypothesis, which states that in so-called honour and shame societies, male members of the family claim control and ownership of female members’ bodies and sexualities; thus, sexual misbehaviour of a woman brings dishonour upon men in the family, who can reclaim honour by punishing the woman. The author demonstrates limited applicability of honour and shame hypothesis within the context of this study, although it provides new perspectives on the way kin relations are conceptualized in Kazakhstan. The results of the study show that non-acceptance of the child by the young mother’s family serves as a critical factor for her seclusion at the Mother’s House. Moreover, by taking the discussion beyond the honour and shame framework, the analysis suggests that unwed women actively negotiate social norms and reclaim agency over their lives by embracing lone motherhood.    

 

Internal Advisers: Gavin Slade & Alima Bissenova  
External Adviser: Laura Piacentini, University of Strathclyde Glasgow 

Viva-voce examination – July 17, 3 p.m.

On July 17 at 3 p.m.,  Zhanar Tuyakpayeva will be defending her thesis in a public viva-voce examination on zoom platform.

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Title: Landscape in the Perception of the People Living in the Altai Republic

This thesis examines the perception of the landscape by the people living in the Altai Republic. The religious practices of the Telengits – an ethnic group inhabiting the south of the republic – are examined in order to understand what the setting is for understanding the native landscape. The author aims to identify preliminary background that allows us to understand how the topic of landscape might be approached. This thesis approaches the landscape through understanding it through the Telengits belief or worldview, which embraces such religious practices such as jalama/kyira (ribbon tying) and ule/oboo (cairns). Although the Imperial/Soviet ethnography ideologically assigned these practices to be a part of shamanism – a term used for defining different practices among the people inhabiting Altai, this thesis re-visits this definition and gives another concept, which is Altai jan. Altai jan is said to be a genuine belief of the Telengits that embrace such practices jalama/kyira and ule/oboo and other, that conducted to placate spirits who inhabit places making whole Altai an entity before it is solid land. The thesis results in the statement that in order to maintain their landscape, the Telengits state that practices must be conducted. However, as the practices are being forgotten, the landscape is deteriorating, which causes the weakening of their ethnic identity too.

Internal Advisers: Daniel Beben & Eva-Marie Dubuisson  
External Adviser: Jesko Schmoller, Center for Religious Studies, Bochum

Viva-voce examination – July 16, 4 p.m.

On July 16 at 4 p.m.,  Zhansaule Kimel will be defending her thesis in a public viva-voce examination on zoom platform.

 

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Title: Boutique owners of Astana: Women Entrepreneurs’ Thorny Path to Success

Many people believe that shuttle trade does not exist anymore and it is a thing of the past.  Shuttle trade as an activity in which individual peddlers buy goods abroad and import them for resale in local markets and street shops, was one of the main achievements that created millions of jobs and ensured relative stability at a time of uncertain 1990s.  Today’s shuttle trade exists under the guise of various types of business enterprises and legalized entrepreneurship. Sometimes it is still the only income source for many households of post-Soviet Kazakhstan. This thesis asks what the effects of shuttle trade have been on the personal lives of merchant women in Kazakhstan.  I focus on the narratives of women and their own evaluation of the impact of trading on their lives. This study focuses on the experience of the women who got involved in shuttle trade after the collapse of the Soviet Union and their perspective on that experience from today’s standpoint.  It reveals the losses and challenges that women faced in their lives as merchants. This topic is interesting not only from the perspective of assessing the situation of free-market trade activities after the demise of the Soviet Union but also from the perspective of analyzing the experience and stories of those merchant women. In this paper, women express their views and attitudes toward their business, life, work, family and also how their life perceptions changed over time. These women were the ones who, with their hard work, physically created the capitalist market, sometimes without any knowledge and tools. Their contributions to the social and economic development of the country remain highly relevant. I find that despite the benefits of shuttle trading for women including financial independence, freedom, and/or social influence, it has also significant costs and brings some regrets. By travelling the road from the small-scale petty trading to successful and legal business ownership, women traders contributed and in some ways shaped the market economy of post-Soviet Kazakhstan.  This study will add value to the knowledge of the shuttle trade process not from the economic perspective but from the socio-cultural sensitivity. It would be in interest to those who are interested in gender, sociology, culture, to learn the experience of merchant women from their own viewpoint and understand the role of women in a patriarchal society as Kazakhstan.

Internal Advisers: Alima Bissenova & Saltanat Akhmetova  
External Adviser: Regine Spector, University of Massachusets Amherst

Viva-voce examination – July 15, 4 p.m.

On July 15 at 4 p.m.,  Yuliya Ten will be defending her thesis in a public viva-voce examination on zoom platform.

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Title: Gender Nonconformity and Homosexuality in Kazakhstan’s Contemporary Visual Culture

While gender binarism and heterosexual relations are widely present in traditional art spaces such as museums and art exhibitions in modern Kazakhstan, non-normative gender and sexual behaviour can rarely be seen there. Artists who post their visual works in social media compensate for this lack of alternative depiction of gender and sexual minorities in the mainstream art spaces. However, these artists remain largely understudied in the academic literature on gender studies and visual culture in Central Asia. In this thesis, I contribute to this literature by studying the depiction of gender and sexual non-conforming people in contemporary visual culture in Kazakhstan’s social media. By analyzing the illustrations by three artists – Murat Dilmanov, Daniyar Sabitov, and Veronika Fonova – I demonstrate the spectrum of diverse representation of non-normative gender and sexual expression. First, I claim that Dilmanov’s political caricatures offer a simplified heteronormative depiction of gay and effeminate men. In order to show that the way the artist depicts queers in his illustrations is limited to a stereotypical image of gays, I use Bakhtin’s concept of monoglossia. Second, I show that, in his collages, Sabitov creates a utopian image of Kazakhstan where queers are well-integrated into a broader society; I explain his project by using Munoz’s concept of queer futurity. I argue that Sabitov’s collages, although offering a less stereotypical depiction of queer people, still imagine them within heteronormative and assimilationist realm. Third, I claim that Fonova is an artist who (contrary to Dilmanov and Sabitov) moves from a political and/or activist agenda and concentrates instead on the depiction of the private life of queer people. By focusing on their romantic life in the context of a daily routine, Fonova demonstrates the diversity of gender and sexual nonconformity as something that exists naturally. It exists not as part of political activism, but rather as something that is surrounded by what can be seen as queer boringness of everyday life. Thus, I show the progression of gender nonconforming and/or homosexual people’s depiction in the visual culture of modern Kazakhstan moving from heteronormative stereotypical (Dilmanov) and assimilationist (Sabitov) to non-heteronormative (Fonova) rhetoric.

Internal Advisers: Victoria Thorstensson & Erika Alpert  
External Adviser: Diana Kudaibergenova, Cambridge University

Viva-voce examination – July 13, 4 p.m.

On July 13 at 4 p.m.,  Dulat Ilyassov will be defending his thesis in a public viva-voce examination on zoom platform.

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Meeting ID: 715 387 7358

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Title: Construction of queer identities based on the queer discourses in Kazakh

This thesis examines the construction and expression of a queer identity on the example of queer fiction written in Kazakh in modern Kazakhstan. A single work of fiction titled “Renaissance”, and written by a young Kazakh man, who identifies himself as gay is analyzed in connection to the platform, on which this work is created and disseminated. The work’s connection to the notions of space and time is highlighted, in order to reveal the inner complexities of the queer experience among the Kazakh-speaking gay men in Kazakhstan. The work and its sociocultural prerequisites are analyzed through the use of Foucauldian notion of heterotopia. The effect that heterotopias have on identity is studied through the use of Derridian grammatology and Deleuzian notion of rhizomatic connections. Reddit style forums on the VK social media written by and for gay men are studied with the purpose of isolating and examining various processes that are taking place within the Kazakhstani queer community. These forums are then connected to the page, on which the work of fiction under study is published. The thesis traces the metamorphoses of the main protagonist’s identity within the story. These traces are found in the language of the text, as well as the interactions between characters and the setting of the story. This analysis resulted in the understanding of queer identity as a dynamic phenomenon.

Internal Advisers: Erika Alpert & Jenni Lehtinen
External Adviser: Dan Healey, Oxford University