Nazarbayev University will host an international conference bringing together scholars and experts to explore new ways of understanding the history of Central Asia.
How can we rethink and revise historical narratives for a region that has been traditionally conceived as a realm of inter-imperial competition?
Our conference probes answers to this question. We believe that both transnational and transimperial approaches hold the key to overcoming binaries shaping narratives about the past. Transnational aspects in Central Asian history, such as migration, exchanges of goods and ideas, and foreign invasions, bring into relief a dynamic unity of experiences at odds with designated borders and ethnographic divisions. The transimperial framework, in turn, postulates the persistence of practices of imperial population management and means of resistance to it, weakening the hold of conventional periodizations. Together, they foster a new vision of the region’s recent history, wherein modernity and tradition, colonizer and colonized, metropole and periphery are not stacked hierarchically, but are woven into a complex tapestry of cooptation, cooperation, and conflict.
The conference gathers scholars, librarians, archival practitioners and public intellectuals to initiate a search for new narratives by applying novel methodological prisms and tapping into unused – hitherto inaccessible, forgotten, or ignored – sources. We pay attention both to the interactions between and with principal neighboring empires and local responses to the challenges and opportunities of the era. The upheavals of the 20th century – revolutions, wars of decolonization, and the Cold War – affected ideas about governance, citizenship, and identity in Central Asia, abetting or hindering a transition from the late-Soviet to the post-Independence era. The conference also features discussions on the state of Central Asian archives and libraries, means of highlighting local voices, and the role that interaction between historians and public intellectuals plays in fostering civil society across the region.
Contact information:
mikhail.akulov@nu.edu.kz
