Long Abstract:

A great deal of scholarly attention has been paid to the processes involved in constructing national identity in Central Asia from the late nineteenth century to the present. This interdisciplinary roundtable, however, proposes to step beyond the paradigm of the nation, in order to focus on the role of transnational writers and other culture workers whose lives and works disrupt or contradict state-driven processes of national identity building. In doing so, the roundtable aims to shed light on the multidiscursive and diverse nature of national identity-building processes themselves, and the ways in which they develop over time in varying political and cultural contexts. Topics to be taken into consideration include:

--the relationship between pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary national intelligentsia in former Soviet Central Asia

--cross-border and global cultural connections between writers and culture workers of Soviet Central Asia, China, Afghanistan, the United States, Western Europe, and countries of the Non-Aligned movement

--the mobility of individuals and institutions, as well as representations of diversity and transnational mobility in Central Asian literature and artistic works

--translingualism and multilingualism in Central Asian literature and artistic works

--critical reassessment of Central Asian national literary canons