Central Asia has been an important crossroads of cultural exchange throughout history, but studies of the area are lacking and many sources of knowledge have been unavailable to scholars. Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign lead a project that recently published an edited volume of work on the cultural heritage, history and knowledge of Central Asia.
"Peripheral Narratives and Knowledge Production in Soviet and Contemporary Central Asia, 1917-Present" was developed by the Central Asia Research Cluster, a collaborative transnational partnership aiming to provide a new platform for Central Asian scholars and co-produce joint publications. The collective work was published digitally by the University Library's Illinois Open Publishing Network.
"Central Asia is now one of the fastest growing world regions, with a significant amount of economic, cultural and political activity," said Joseph Lenkart, the director of the University Library's Slavic Reference Service and the co-director of the Central Asia Research Cluster with Eva Rogaar, an Illinois alumna, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam and lecturer at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, and Katherine Ashcraft, a visiting Central Asia reference specialist at the Slavic Reference Service.
Even three decades after the breakup of the former Soviet Union, the cultural history of the region is often viewed through Soviet and Russian lenses, Lenkart said. There is a lack of representation of scholarship from the region, and many archives and other sources of historical knowledge are underused or inaccessible, he said.
One of the reasons is a language barrier. While many researchers might know Russian, they often don't know Central Asian languages. For the native speakers of those languages, "writing and going through the publishing process in English can be intimidating and exclusionary," and as a result there is limited English-language scholarship available from those scholars, Lenkart said.
Additionally, during the Russian colonial period and Soviet rule, there was consolidation of publishing activities and a vast censorship apparatus, which dictated what type of content could be published, Lenkart said. Even after the former Soviet republics gained independence, they have been ruled mostly by authoritarian governments that have continued the same type of censorship as the former Soviet Union, he said.
"Another major factor that is challenging, especially to early career scholars, is that the process of writing and publishing an academic article can be quite lonely," Rogaar said. "That is why we prioritized exchange, mutual support and collegiality in our project. Participating authors read each other's drafts and some formed writing groups. Many authors cited the support network and feeling of community as some of the most valuable aspects of the project."
The initiative aims to highlight stories from the peripheries of the region, broadly defined, away from the centers of power that have controlled intellectual output. The new book reexamines historical material from the region and how institutions have shaped collective memory, Lenkart said.
"Even after 30 years, we're still figuring out how we reassess the Soviet period and the current period we're going through," he said.
The book's chapters reflect a variety of disciplines, including history, linguistics, art, literature and the built environment. The authors examined topics such as expressions of ecocriticism by Central Asian artists, how music production in Tajikistan reflects its local landscapes and geography, an ethnographic study on religious minorities, the 19th century justice system in Kazakhstan and infrastructure and preservation efforts in contemporary Kyrgyzstan.
"They are very fresh perspectives on Central Asian history that we haven't seen in a while in the English language academic press," Lenkart said.
With access to Russia largely closed off, Central Asian studies has been the focus of greater academic attention, and scholars are increasingly conducting research in Central Asia, he said.
"More and more students and scholars are establishing collaborative partnerships with researchers based in Central Asia, Eastern Europe and the Caucasus region," Lenkart said. "Witnessing the tumultuous period right now, projects like this connect more individuals and facilitate intellectual and cultural exchanges."
In addition to the book, the Central Asia Research Cluster project published a special issue in Slavic & East European Information Resources and authors submitted articles to Slavic Review.
