The first meeting this semester of the Central Asia & Caucasus Working Group will be held on:
Tuesday, February 3, 4:15-6:00 pm
in CGIS Room S-354 at 1730 Cambridge St., 3rd Floor,
Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies
We will begin with an introduction to the Working Group for new participants and with a chance for all to introduce themselves and mention their particular interests and projects. All interested people are encouraged to join.
In addition to introductions and discussion of scheduling of subsequent meetings, we would like to devote some time to MA theses that a number of you are working on. We would like to ask each of the Working Group participants who is working on a thesis to take a few minutes to present their thesis topic. In particular, this presentation should include brief mention of the particular problems and challenges that you are dealing with at the present stage of thesis writing. We hope that by discussing these, we can share ideas and experience that will help your thesis-writing along -- and also allow the rest of the group to get a taste of the fascinating topics which you are exploring.
The Working Group is, first and foremost, and opportunity for us to get (and give) useful feedback on the projects-in-progress that we are pursuing -- theses, course papers, articles, conference papers, etc. The group is a stable, sympathetic group who are generally generous with their comments. Please come prepared to talk a bit about any project that you might be considering for presentation this semester.
If you need to be added to the Working Group e-mail mailing list (in other words, if you received this message indirectly) or if you know of someone who would be interested in receiving information about the Working Group, just send me the name/e-mail address and we'll add it to the list.
If you would potentially be interested in making a presentation to the Working Group in the early part of the semester, please let us know as soon as possible.
Most of you have been on the Working Group list for some time, but we provide the information about the group below for those to whom it is of interest:
About the Working Group
The Working Group on "Society, Politics and Culture in Central Asia and the Caucasus" forum that meets roughly every other week for discussion of projects on Central Asia. The Working Group is aimed at providing a context for focused discussion on Central Asian and Caucasus-related topics among Harvard graduate students, faculty, and other interested scholars in the Cambridge and Boston area. Central Asia, for these purposes, is understood to include the states of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, as well as closely related areas: the Caucasus, the Volga Basin, Southwestern Siberia, Mongolia, Iran, Afghanistan, etc. Each week is devoted to a presentation of some work-in-progress (a thesis prospectus, chapter, or paper) by one of the Working Group participants, accompanied by helpful discussion by the group as a whole.
The Working Group is chaired by Laura Adams and John Schoeberlein.
The Working Group is an activity of the Harvard Program on Central Asia and the Caucasus at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. The group has been meeting since 1994. Guest speakers are also sometimes invited.
In the organizational meeting, we will discuss the schedule for future meetings, which will be on Tuesdays, alternating with the meetings of the Central Asia and Caucasus Seminar (public seminar series).
Please also consider the possibility of presenting a project at some point in the course of the semester or the year, and come to the first meeting with ideas. Note that the project can be something rather "raw", though ideally you should have a (draft) paper that can be distributed in advance of your presentation.
Please contact us with any questions or suggestions you might have.
We look forward to your participation!
John Schoeberlein and Laura Adams
Program on Central Asia and the Caucasus
Davis Center \ Harvard University
1730 Cambridge St., Room S-320 \ Cambridge, MA 02138 \ USA
tel.: +1/617-495-4338 asst.: +1/617-496-2643 fax: +1/617-495-8319
centasia@fas.harvard.edu
Central Asia Program website: http://centasia.fas.harvard.edu
Central-Eurasia-L: http://cesww.fas.harvard.edu/ces_cel.html
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