[Bilimsel Haber] CONF.- Ethnic and Religious Communities in the Caucasus, March 27-28, London

[Sule Tarakcioglu]

From: Jane Savory <js64@SOAS.AC.UK>


CONF.- Ethnic and Religious Communities in the Caucasus, March 27-28, London

An International Conference on Ethnic and Religious Communities in the 
Caucasus

27-28 March 2006

Venue:
Warburg Institute London
Woburn Square London WC1

Web: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/hebrew-jewish/ijs/caucasus-conference/

The Royal Anthropological Institute is organising a conference on 
"Ethnic and
Religious Communities in the Caucasus.  The conference is funded by the 
British
Academy, with additional support from the Institute of Jewish Studies, 
UCL. The
conference organiser is Dr. Florentina Badalanova Geller.

Conference Participants

Organiser:
Dr. Florentina Badalanova Geller (The Royal Anthropological Institute of 
Great
Britain and Ireland)

Prof. Sergei Arutiunov (Chairman, Dept. of Caucasian Studies, Institute of
Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow)
'Sacrifice in the Caucasus'

Dr. Gilles Authier (INALCO, Paris)
'Language Endangerment in the Caucasus: a Typology'

Dr. Viacheslav Chirkba (University of Leiden)
'Between Christianity and Islam: Pagan Heritage in the Caucasus'

Prof. John Colarusso (Department of Anthropology of Modern Languages and
Linguistics, McMaster University, Ontario, Canada)
'Caucasian Nart Heroes and their Links beyond the Caucasus'

Dr. Sascha Goluboff (Asst. Prof. of Cultural Anthropology, Dept. of 
Sociology
and Anthropology, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Va)
'Mountain Jews in the Caucasus'

Prof. John A C Greppin (Director, Program in Linguistics, Cleveland State
University)
'The inter-relationship of Hurrian and Urartian with the Preliterate 
Armenians
and the Language of the North-East Caucasus'

Dr. Edmund Herzig (Middle Eastern Studies, University of Manchester)
'Does Geography decide history?'

Prof. George Hewitt (Professor of Caucasian Languages, SOAS)
'Minorities within minorities and the position of their languages: the 
case of
late-Soviet Georgia and post-Soviet Abkhazia'

Prof. Steven Jones (Professor of Russian and Eurasian Studies, Mt. Holyoke
College, Massachusetts)
'All politics is local, even in Georgia'

Prof. John Klier (Corob Professor Eastern-European Jewish History, UCL,
Dept. of Hebrew and Jewish Studies)
'Do Georgian Jews Drink Human Blood?'

Dr. Marina Kurkchiyan (Paul Dodyk Fellow in Socio-Legal Studies, Centre for
Social Legal Studies, University of Oxford)
'The Deconstruction of the National Self-Image in Post-Soviet Armenia'

Dr Alexander Panchenko (Institute of Russian Literature, Russian Academy of
Sciences)
'Heterodox Christianity in the Caucasus'

Dr. Sergey A. Shtyrkov (Assistant Prof., Dept. of Ethnology, European
University, St. Petersburg)
'Between Jewishness and Russianness: the case of religious sectarians 
Subbotniki
(Judaizing Heresy) in the Caucasus'

Dr. G. Yemelianova (Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Russian and 
East
European Studies, the European Research Institute, the University of 
Birmingham)
'The Muslim Caucasus'

Prof. Boghos Levon Zekiyan (Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, Ca'
Foscari University, Venice)
'Cultural and political relations in the Subcaucasus, with special 
regard to its
Christian heritage: Some methodological remarks'

Dr. Anna Zelkina (SOAS)
'The changing religious situation in the Caucasus in respect to the 
different
currents in Islam'

Evening public lecture, Cruciform Lecture Theatre 2, UCL

Monday 27 March, 6.45pm

Vartan Akchyan (Georgetown University), will introduce his documentary 
film on
Jews in Armenia: The Hidden Diaspora (nominated for Best Documentary at 
AFFMA
International Film Festival in Los Angeles, 2002). This event is 
sponsored by
the Institute of Jewish Studies, UCL

The recent tragic events in the Caucasus, as well as the ongoing war in
Chechnya, have focussed the world's attention on the region. 
Nevertheless, some
of the information presented in the press and elsewhere has been far from
accurate. Even some reputable academic journals have limited themselves to
subjective political analyses of the region from particular points of view.

The purpose of the present conference is to employ an anthropological 
and hence
more politically unbiased perspective of the region, taking into 
consideration
ethnic and religious identities of the communities in the Caucasus. 
This region
was historically targeted by large empires (Ottoman Empire, Russian Empire,
Soviet Union, etc.) for their own geo-political purposes, without regard 
to the
local priorities and sensibilities.

Serving as a border between Europe and Asia, the Caucasus also comprises a
virtual knot of religious entanglements. Christians, Muslims, and Jews 
were part
of its ethnic embroidery, and it contains a long cultural memory of
pre-Christian and pre-Islamic religious cults and beliefs. It serves as an
example of both religions in contact and religions in conflict. Because 
of the
great language diversity in the region, it is vital to bring together 
scholars
with first-hand knowledge of source materials and a good grasp of regional
circumstances.

This region is often seen as an example of 'clash of civilizations', 
although
the picture is much more complicated than a clash between Christianity and
Islam, or Soviet and post-Soviet politics. One scholar has described the 
ethnic
mosaic of the Caucasus as 'minorities without a majority'. There is a 
tendency
in the popular press to oversimplify these complex issues in the Caucasus,
blaming a single political or religious cause for the conflicts.

The new circumstances in the Caucasus appear to have reinforced old 
ethnic and
religious stereotypes related to the region, as revealed in both popular and
scholarly discussions. The immediate goal of the conference will be 
therefore to
re-assess questions related to ethno-history and national 
self-determination of
peoples in the Caucasus, as well as their own interpretation of ethnic 
hostility
and religious animosity.

The potential contribution of this conference to anthropology will be a 
dialogue
between scholars providing a fuller understanding of the issues of clashing
ethnic, religious, and national identities in the Caucasus.

For further information about the conference, please contact:

Institute of Jewish Studies, UCL: uclhvtm@ucl.ac.uk
Conference organiser, Florentina Badalanova Geller: f.geller@ucl.ac.uk

Admission to the conference is free and no advanced booking is required.




Distrib. by: Central-Eurasia-L - Announcement List for Central Eurasian 
Studies