For a list of upcoming events and projects, please see our page on Projects and Programs.

News

ARISC is pleased to announce that we have been awarded a grant by the Leon Levy Foundation. This grant will help ARISC plan for the next five years of its organization. We thank the Leon Levy Foundation for its support!

Armenia:

Courting the Nation Abroad: Diaspora Policies in Post-communist Armenia, Croatia and Serbia

Sarah Garding (PhD candidate, University of California, Berkeley; ARISC Fellow)

August 27, 2010
14.00-16.00
CRRC-Armenia
52, Abovyan Street
3rd floor, room 305
Yerevan, Armenia

Over the last several decades, a growing number of contemporary and historical sending states have developed policies to engage their diasporas in the politics and economy of the homeland. In Eastern Europe and Eurasia, the collapse of communism presented a unique opportunity for new governments to reconfigure relations with their diasporas and overcome the antagonism that had hitherto marred state-diaspora relations. This talk addresses the varying approaches to engaging the diaspora in post-Soviet and post-Yugoslav Armenia, Croatia, and Serbia. Specifically, I focus on citizenship policies, extraterritorial voting, parliamentary representation, and the creation of diaspora bureaucracies -- policies that are often used by sending states to deepen emigrants' political ties to their country of perceived origin. These three postcommunist countries simultaneously grappled with war, independence, state-building, and economic collapse, and thus one might expect to find strong policies to engage the diaspora. In fact, governments in these three states showed varied willingness to deepen state-diaspora ties. This talk assesses the sources of this variation.

Sarah Garding is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation looks at the policies of post-Soviet Armenia and post-Yugoslav Croatia and Serbia towards diaspora populations, and the participation of the latter in homeland political affairs in the wake of independence. She carried out the research for this project in Croatia and Serbia during 2009-2010 as an IREX fellow, and is currently in Yerevan as a fellow with the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus.

This talk is co-sponsored by the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC) and the Caucasus Research Resource Center (CRRC). For more information, please visit http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=146138098747342

The Kura Araxes Culture in Regional Context with Special Reference to Shengavit

Professor Mitchell Rothman, Widener University (USA)

July 6, 2010

4:00pm

CRRC, 52 Abovyan, 3rd floor

Yerevan, Armenia

The Kura Araxes Culture is a unique culture of the 4th and early 3rd millennia BC in the Transcaucasian area. Originally thought to be a minor village culture, it is now clear that it was part of an ancient globalization stretching from the Persian Gulf to the plains of the North Caucasus opening into eastern Europe and western China. Peoples from the Transcaucasus migrated into the Taurus and Zagros Mountains all the way to the north Jordan valley of modern Israel in the early 3rd millennium creating a unique blending of cultures. This illustrated talk speaks of the nature of this culture and work of an Armenian-American team under the leadership of Hakop Simonyan at Shengavit.

Dr. Mitchell Rothman is a Professor of Anthropology and Archaeology at Widener University in Pennsylvania and a consulting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum. Beginning in 1974 he has been doing archaeology in the greater Middle East, first in Iran then Turkey, and now Armenia and has analyzed material from Iraq. His interest is in the development of cultures in the 4th and 3rd millennia BC. His publications include books on the theory of cultural evolution, Tepe Gawra Iraq, Godin Tepe, Iran, and the Uruk Culture of Mesopotamia. His interest in the Kura Araks Culture began while surveying in Mus by Lake Van.

This talk is co-sponsored by the Caucasus Research Resource Center (CRRC) and the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC)

Azerbaijan:

Rethinking the Origins of Civilization in Azerbaijan: 2010 Excavations at Oglanqala, Naxcivan

Dr. Lauren Ristvet, University of Pennsylvania

August 10, 2010
7:00pm
60, R. Behbudov Street, American Center
Azerbaijan University of Languages, 1st floor
Baku, Azerbaijan

From 2008-2010, a joint American-Azerbaijani team of archaeologists and scientists have been excavating an Iron Age site called Oglanqala in Naxcivan. The project focuses on the creation of a small state during the 9th century, one of the earliest in Azerbaijan , and the important roles resistance and cultural exchange played in the origins of politics here. The fortification walls of Oglanqala enclose an area of 12 hectares, but there are extensive architectural remains and pottery scatters across a 50 hectare area, making this one of the largest sites in the Caucasus from this period. Excavation has revealed four phases, from 1200-100 BC, during which this site was one of the principle centers of Azerbaijan .

Lauren Ristvet (BA, Yale 1999; MPhil, PhD, Cambridge 2005) specializes in Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern history and archaeology, with an emphasis on the formation and collapse of archaic states, landscape archaeology, human response to environmental disaster, and ancient imperialism. She is the associate director of excavations at Tell Leilan, Syria (ancient Shehna/Shubat-Enlil), where she has excavated since 1999. This was one of the largest ancient cities in Northern Mesopotamia, and the short-lived capital of the Kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia during the 18th century B.C. She is also co-director of the Naxcivan Archaeological Project in Naxcivan, Azerbaijan, a combined survey and excavation project.

This event is co-sponsored by the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC) and the US Educated Azerbaijani Alumni Association (AAA). For more information, please visit http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=102692836453766&ref=mf

Workshop: Research Grant Writing

This workshop, led by Anar Valiyev and Sabina Manafova, aims to help scholars and academicians in the humanities and social sciences learn how to write winning proposals for research related grants. A comprehensive, hands-on workshop that covers researching funding sources and writing real proposals, this program will teach participants how to use the proposal writing format, the most widely used in the world. Participants will leave this workshop with new skills and the ability to apply those skills to their own needs or to the needs of their institutions.

During the first session, participants will be given instruction and practical exercises going through all the stages of a grant proposal. In the second session participants will prepare their own complete proposals related to their research interests, which will be reviewed and evaluated.

Session I
Saturday, 12 June 2010
10:30am - 1:00pm
CRRC Baku
122, B.Safaroglu Street, Khazar University, 2nd floor
Baku AZ1009, Azerbaijan

Session II
Saturday, 19 June 2010
10:30am - 1:00pm
CRRC Baku
122, B.Safaroglu Street, Khazar University, 2nd floor
Baku AZ1009, Azerbaijan

To apply, please submit a cover letter, a page describing your interest in the workshop in English and your CV to ARISCEvents "at" yahoo. com no later than 2 June 2010. Space is limited and applicants will be contacted by 9 June 2010 with the results.

This workshop is sponsored by the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC) and the Caucasus Research Resource Centers (CRRC).

Georgia:

Nineteenth-Century City of Colonial Convergence: The Role of Tiflis in the Development of an Azerbaijani Intelligentsia

Aimee Dobbs, PhD (Indiana University, ARISC Fellow)

Thursday, July 29, 2010
17:30 – 18:30  ISET building (CRRC)
Zandukeli 16 Tbilisi, Georgia

This presentation focuses on the role of Tbilisi and its surrounds in fostering the development of an Azerbaijani intelligentsia in the mid-late nineteenth century. Of particular focus are the institutions of cultural production; the colonial-administrative apparatus, Imperial schools (specifically Gori Teachers’ Seminary), printing presses, and philanthropic societies that generated spaces for cultural and intellectual development among immigrant Azerbaijanis. Whether by direct participation in or observation of these institutions, through their experiences these men cultivated state-dependent social and cultural capital that came to challenge traditional Azerbaijani circles of power. This newly-emerging Azerbaijani elite eventually endeavored to use its new position as a liaison between the state and the local Muslim population as a method by which to claim the right to lead the modernization campaign, thereby redefining local educational, social, and cultural values. Thus an understanding of Tbilisi ’s influence upon the Azerbaijani intelligentsia aids my overall dissertation research by providing a point of genesis from which they came to understand themselves as the heart of the modernization campaign and the Russian Imperial state as a lever of transformation.

Aimee Dobbs is a PhD Candidate from Indiana University Department of History and an ARISC Fellow. Her research is on nineteenth-century Russian Imperial educational efforts and local Azerbaijani responses from 1862 to 1890. This summer she has been researching in Tbilisi, Georgia on a grant from the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus . Last year she spent her time researching in Baku , Azerbaijan on a Fulbright-Hays grant. Ms. Dobbs’s primary research interests include education policies and the establishment of non-Russian schools in late imperial Russia , colonial relationships, and the formation of nationalism among the Russian empire's Muslim groups.

Terroir -izing Land: Property, Value, and Wine in Georgia

Adam Walker, PhD (City University of New York)

Thursday, July 1, 2010
17:30 – 18:30
ISET building (CRRC)
Zandukeli 16
Tbilisi, Georgia

Adam Walker will be presenting his PhD research: The question of the eventual success of the Georgian wine industry on the international wine market is the subject of intense scrutiny among a variety of state, private, and development interests within Georgia, a focus which has, since privatization, considerably narrowed the scope of rural interventions. This focus on wine is understandable since, aside from its status as a privileged export commodity, wine is a beverage that has wide-ranging symbolic and political importance in Georgia. As an essential requirement in toasting during the supra, wine operates as a complex symbol that mediates conflicting ideologies of consumption, idealized forms of sociality, and claims to nation and “tradition.”

Yet the particularities of decollectivization and privatization of land and wineries have produced a disjuncture between the interests of large-scale producers and re-traditionalized, land-holding farmers. This paper is an attempt to articulate how the increasing economic and social inequality that is part and parcel of the neoliberalizing postsocialist Georgian landscape can be analyzed by foregrounding the contestation over the meaning and value of wine and its intersection with claims over property and terroir. In particular, the push to integrate Georgian wine production into an international marketplace by a matrix of state, private, and international-development interests is accompanied by a range of techniques which, in the name of the “protection of Georgian wine appellations,” may increasingly reconfigure the bases on which the construction and consolidation of value can take place, and claims by rural populations for state-intervention can be legitimized.

This presentation is sponsored by the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC) and the Caucasus Research Resource Centers (CRRC).

“Gender, Family and Migration in Georgia: Exploring household dynamics and migration decisions”

Erin Hofmann, Ph.D. candidate (University of Texas - Austin)

Wednesday, June 16, 2010
5:30 - 6:30pm
ISET building (CRRC)
Zandukeli 16
Tbilisi, Georgia

In this WiP, Erin Hofmann will present her Ph.D. project, which focuses on gender differences in the motivations for labor migration from Georgia. In this mixed methods project, she will use a combination of statistical analysis and in-depth interviews to explain the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of male and female migrants from Georgia, and explore the role of gender norms and family structures in explaining differences between male and female migration. Georgia is unusual among migrant-sending countries due to its high levels of both male and female migration, and the extreme diversity of destination countries where Georgian migrants can be found. The issue of migration from Georgia has received little attention outside the country, despite its potential to enrich our theories of gender and migration.

The presentation will focus on the theoretical background of the research, the challenges of conducting migration research in Georgia, the potential benefits of combining survey data and interviews, and methods for exploring migration as a household decision.

This series is being co-sponsored by the Caucasus Research Resource Centers (CRRC), American Councils for International Education, and the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC). For more information, please see http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/event.php?eid=114857051891681&index=1

“On the Question How to do Study Dynamics of Violence in the South Ossetian Conflict: Patterns, Practices, Mechanisms”

Lara Sigwart, Ph.D researcher

Wednesday, June 9, 2010
5:30 - 6:30pm
ISET building (CRRC)
Zandukeli 16
Tbilisi, Georgia

In this WiP, Lara Sigwart will be presenting her PhD project, which studies dynamics of violence in the South Ossetian conflict from 1989 to 2008. In her project, she hypothesizes that practices of state actors in the context of the conflict relate to their power-consolidating ambitions and, in this way, will help to explain how violence came to escalate at certain points in time, and not at others. Considering this, structures such as Russian and Western policies, internal power shifts, economic incentives and political talks factor into the transitions between the respective phases of violence.

The presentation will focus on the turning points in the process of violence after 1989, shedding light on the working hypotheses the project deals with. The presentation will then turn to the methodical problems the project faces at its current state, such as how to gather the data, how to use the data, and answers to be obtained from the data.

This series is being co-sponsored by the Caucasus Research Resource Centers (CRRC), American Councils for International Education, and the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC). For more information, please see http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=121904041179636

"Youth Culture in Modern Georgia - A Case of Westernization or Invention of a New Tradition?"

Dr. Lika Tsuladze

Wednesday, June 2, 2010
5:30 - 6:30pm
ISET building (CRRC)
Zandukeli 16
Tbilisi, Georgia

In this WiP, Lika Tsuladze will be presenting her current research, which seeks to find out how youth identities are constructed through bricolage in modern Georgia. The main method of her research is discourse analysis. In a unique way, Tsuladze has invloved her students as co-researchers in her research in order to analyze the youth culture seen from the perspective of youth themselves.

"Small Scale Monitoring of IDPs: the Art of the Possible"

Mr. David Jijelava

Wednesday, May 19, 2010
5:30 - 6:30pm
ISET building (CRRC)
Zandukeli 16
Tbilisi, Georgia

In this WiP, David Jijelava will discuss a project he just finished which involved a brief analysis of donor development projects going on in new settlements. He is currently trying to design another project to continue this analysis. He is hoping to discuss this research and gain insights from attendees about what one can realistically achieve in small scale monitoring of this kind.

"'Party' or 'Tusovka': A Questionnaire on the Changing Roles of English and Russian in Georgia"

John King

Wednesday, May 12, 2010
5:30 - 6:30pm
ISET building (CRRC)
Zandukeli 16
Tbilisi, Georgia

"On Nationalism and Abkhazia: Theoretically speaking, of course"

William Sadd

Wednesday, May 5, 2010
5:30 - 6:30pm
ISET building (CRRC)
Zandukeli 16
Tbilisi, Georgia

In this WiP, William Sadd will outline the different theoretical approaches to studying nationalism more generally, and will explore what use, if any, the 'historical ethno-symbolist' approach can serve in understanding nationalism in Abkhazia at the end of the Soviet Era. This is a proposal, and is still in early stages of development.

"Studying Community Safety in a Post-Conflict Scenario"

Dr. Hans Gutbrod, Mr. David Wood, and Mr. Giorgi Babunashvili

Wednesday, April 28, 2010
6:00 - 7:00pm
ISET building (CRRC)
Zandukeli 16
Tbilisi, Georgia

This talk is part of the Works-in-Progress (WiP) series. How do we get at community safety in a post-conflict scenario? How do we use focus groups to plan for a survey? This workshop will introduce a draft questionnaire that is being designed for a survey in May 2010.

Registered participants will receive access to the questionnaire, which we will be discussing in detail. The workshop will be introduced by Hans Gutbrod, and co-moderated by David Wood from Saferworld (who has done similar work in Moldova, Macedonia and other locations) and Giorgi Babunashvili from CRRC.

This will be a great session for learning about the nuances of questionnaire development.

This series is being co-sponsored by the Caucasus Research Resource Centers (CRRC), American Councils for International Education, and the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC). For more information, please see http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=113255745376026#!/event.php?eid=113255745376026

"Difference in Attitudes towards Political Participation of Azeris in Azerbaijan and Georgia"

Joshua Noonan (Fulbright fellow, Azerbaijan and Georgia)

Wednesday, April 21, 2010
5:30 - 6:30pm
ISET building (CRRC)
Zandukeli 16
Tbilisi, Georgia

This talk is part of the Works-in-Progress (WiP) series. Mr. Noonan’s topic concerns the comparison of the attitudes towards political participation for Azerbaijani minorities in Georgia and those attitudes of Azerbaijanis in Azerbaijan in order to find if and why these attitudes are divergent.

This series is being co-sponsored by the Caucasus Research Resource Centers (CRRC), American Councils for International Education, and the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC). For more information, please see http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=119623688047744

"Complexity of the Caucasus"

Sarah Slye

Wednesday, April 14, 2010
5:30pm
ISET building (CRRC)
Zandukeli 16
Tbilisi, Georgia

Undertaking academic research on the Caucasus in the Caucasus can be quite a challenge. It is a region usually overlooked not only because of its status as a borderland but also due to its complexity. Simply put most people can't handle it and don't get it. That's why, back in the USA, there are so few mentors for students interested in the region. I will discuss several strategies for overcoming this handicap and emerging victorious.

This talk is part of the Works-in-Progress (WiP) series. The purpose of this series is twofold:• To provide support and productive criticism to those researching and developing academic projects pertaining to Georgia and the Caucasus region, and• To engage the vibrant academic community living in Tbilisi, and local residents, with a more consistent level of discourse, discussion, and debate in consideration of the most curious matters concerning Georgia and its neighbors.

"Neither Empire Nor Nation: Networks of Trade in the Caucasus, 1750-1925"

Megan Dean, Ph.D. candidate (Stanford University)

Wednesday, March 31, 2010
5:30pm
ISET building (CRRC)
Zandukeli 16
Tbilisi, Georgia

Megan Dean will be presenting her ongoing research, "Neither Empire Nor Nation: Networks of Trade in the Caucasus, 1750-1925" at Tbilisi's Caucasus Research Resources Center (CRRC) on March 31st at 5:30 pm. Her work probes the limits of identity politics, state control and violence and explores how basic economic exchanges and cultural interactions unfolded in daily life in the Caucasus, a frontier zone of multiple empires. A 2010 recipient of the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC) Graduate Fellowship for her research at the National Archives of Georgia, she is also a Ph.D. Candidate in history at Stanford University in California.

"Georgian Dialectology and Language Contact in the Caucasus: Two Case Studies"

Thomas Wier, Ph.D candidate (University of Chicago)

Wednesday, March 24, 2010
5:30 - 6:30pm
ISET building (CRRC)
Zandukeli 16
Tbilisi, Georgia

"How do Foreigners Learn Georgian? Results from a Small Expatriate Census"

Dr. Hans Gutbrod and Mr. Malte Viefhues

Wednesday, March 17, 2010
5:30pm - 6:30pm
ISET building (CRRC)
Zandukeli 16
Tbilisi, Georgia

This series is being co-sponsored by the Caucasus Research Resource Centers (CRRC), American Councils for International Education, and the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC). For more information, see http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=361900478567&index=1

“An Experiment in Language Status in Georgia”

Dr. Timothy Blauvelt (American Councils)

Wednesday, March 10, 2010
5:30pm - 6:30pm
ISET building (CRRC)
Zandukeli 16
Tbilisi, Georgia

This series is being co-sponsored by the Caucasus Research Resource Centers (CRRC), American Councils for International Education, and the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC). For more information, see http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=384087365080&ref=mf

USA:

Workshop: "Anthropologies of the South Caucasus"

Friday, April 9, 2010, 10am - 6pm
Room 1512, International Affairs Building
420 West 118th Street, New York, NY

A workshop sponsored by the Harriman Institute, Columbia University, and the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus. Full program. Workshop flyer.

For recent events, please see ARISC's Recent Programs page.