Applications are being sought by the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies (GSWS) at Simon Fraser University for a full-time tenure track position at the rank of Associate Professor, to be housed in GSWS with dedicated workload in the Global Asia Program, starting July 1, 2020. Discipline and methodological approach is open. The preferred candidate will be engaged in interdisciplinary research that crosses geographic borders within Asia and/or across the global Asian diasporas.

All materials should be addressed to the GSWS/GA search committee and sent to: gswspost@sfu.ca

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS SEEKS APPLICANTS FOR THE 2020 JUNIOR FELLOWS SUMMER INTERN PROGRAM

The Library of Congress is seeking applicants for its 2020 Junior Fellows Summer Intern Program.

This is a 10-week paid fellowship for undergraduate and graduate students interested in learning more about the work done at the largest library in the world. 

For more information or to apply for the program, visit https://www.loc.gov/item/internships/junior-fellows-program/.

The deadline to apply is Friday, Dec. 20.

MONGOLIA LECTURE SERIES EVENT AT UBC, CANADA ON NOVEMBER 22

As part of the Mongolia Lecture Series at the University of British Columbia's Institute of Asian Research, a lecture event titled "Politics of Scope: Regionalization, Structural Adjustment and Elections in Mongolia" was hosted by Dr. Julian Dierkes and featured two presenters, Dr. Marissa Smith and Mari Valdur, on November 22, 2019 .

Dr. Marissa Smith presented "Provincial Governors vs. People’s Parties: Regionalizing “Local” Party Politics in Mongolia", which was focused on observations around Mongolia's "second city" of Erdenet changing its administrative status from municipality to province.

Mari Valdur's paper was titled "State for Children: The Politics of Structural Adjustment and Motherhood in Mongolia", and explored the scope of Mongolian politics by discussing linkages between structural adjustment and motherhood through the country’s most valuable persons: children.

You can read more about this event here.

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8TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON MEDIEVAL HISTORY OF THE EURASIAN STEPPE HELD IN SOFIA, BULGARIA

Sofia University hosted the 8th  International Conference on Medieval History of the Eurasian Steppe on November 20-23, 2019.

Over 12 scholars presented various fascinating papers related to Mongolian Studies in the Panels 5, 6, 7, and 11, ranging from Tatiana Skrynnikova's "Chinese Sources about Yeke Mongol Ulus Emergence" on Panel 5, and ending with Ishayahu Landa's "The 'Global North' of the Eurasian Steppe in the Aftermath of the 'Mongol Moment'".

You can read more about the conference here.

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LYCÉE MICHELET IN FRANCE PRESENTS CENTURY-OLD MONGOLIAN STUDENT RECORD BOOKS

Eric Biset, Director of the prestigious lycée in France received Baatarbileg Yo., the Education Minister of Mongolia, on November 18, and presented historical records and photos of the Mongolian students 93 years ago. During the mid-1920s, Mongolia sent its 40 best secondary school students to Germany and France, who later became leading intellectuals of scientific, cultural and industrial areas of Mongolia. More details here.

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BURYAT REPUBLIC OF RUSSIA SCHOOLS TO START TEACHING THE BURYAT LANGUAGE

All schools in Buryatia will teach the Buryat language starting from 2020, as announced by the Deputy Minister of Education of the Republic, Dorji Angarkhaev. As some of you know, the Buryat is a Mongolic language that has been on UNESCO's Endangered Language list for some time. More details here -- in Russian.

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CALL FOR ABSTRACTS FOR 4TH BIANNUAL CONFERENCE ON CENTRAL ASIAN LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTICS (APRIL 17-19, 2020)

The Indiana University Center for Languages of the Central Asian Region is accepting submissions for 20-minute paper presentations (with 10 minute post-presentation questions and discussion) on topics related to Central Asian languages and linguistics, including both the Altaic and Eastern Indo-European languages spoken in the region (among others).

Submissions can include, but are not limited to:

Interesting Links -- A variety articles  related to Mongolia were posted during November 2019; here are some of the more notable ones:

• Wall Street Journal, posted on November 1, 2019: "A Road Trip in Mongolia, Surreal and Spectacular"
• Deutsche Welle, posted on November 2, 2019: "Mongolia Arrests 800 Chinese Citizens in Cybercrime probe"
• Mining Technology, posted on November 5, 2019: "Rio Tinto completes Shaft 2 development at Oyu Tolgoi mine in Mongolia"
• Washington Post, posted on November 7, 2019: "In Mongolia, proposed legislation endangers civil society"
• Nikkei Asian Review, posted on November 11, 2019: "Mongolia's emerging IT sector leads economy in new direction"
• The Diplomat, posted on November 13, 2019: "Drones and Beavers: A Watershed Moment for Mongolia’s Park Rangers"
• GameRadar, posted on November 15, 2019: "Star Wars Video Game Features The Hu Song "Black Thunder"
• Smithsonian, posted on November 20, 2019: "Archaeologists Race to Preserve Artifacts as the Ice Melts in Mongolia
• Xinhua, posted on November 20, 2019: "Large prehistoric city site unearthed in Inner Mongolia"
• Metro UK, posted on November 21, 2019: "Remote Mongolian community are paying the ‘first price’ for climate change"
• BBC News, posted on November 23, 2019: "Dinosaurs: Restoring Mongolia's fossil heritage"

• Cambridge University Press: "Diet quality is associated with reduced risk of hypertension among Inner Mongolia adults in northern China"
• PLOS | ONE: "Investigating reindeer pastoralism and exploitation of high mountain zones in northern Mongolia through ice patch archaeology"
• PLOS | ONE: "Radiocarbon dating and cultural dynamics across Mongolia’s early pastoral transition"

Digital collections related to Mongolia we discovered in November, 2019:

• Finna.Fi: "Digitized Mongolian Historical Photographs taken by Archaeologist Sakari Pälsi in 1909"
• Endangered Archives Programme: "Preservation through digitisation of rare photographic negatives from Mongolia (10,089 historical photos from 1910-1950s)"

The Anti-Social Contract: Injurious Talk and Dangerous Exchanges in Northern Mongolia by Lars Hojer: (Berghahn, 2019)

Set in a remote district of villagers and nomadic pastoralists in the northernmost part of Mongolia, this book introduces a local world where social relationships are cast in witchcraft-like idioms of mistrust and suspicion.

While the apparent social breakdown that followed the collapse of state socialism in Mongolia often implied a chaotic lack of social cohesion, this ethnography reveals an everyday universe where uncertain relations are as much internally cultivated in indigenous Mongolian perceptions of social relatedness, as they are externally confronted in post-socialist surroundings of unemployment and diminished social security.

“This book is a very important and vibrant ethnographic work… By emphasizing the dynamics of distancing, suspicion and avoidance in anti-social relations, the author introduces a new, and much fuller, conceptual purchase onto the anthropological term ‘other’, which has underpinned a great deal of classical and contemporary analysis in the discipline.” • Katherine Swancutt, King’s College London

Lars Højer is an associate professor at the Centre for Comparative Culture Studies, Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies at the University of Copenhagen. He has carried out extensive fieldwork in Mongolia and Inner Asia. His previous anthropological research has mainly focused on social, economic, religious, and political aspects of transition processes in urban and rural post-socialist Mongolia.

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The Mongols and the Armenians (1220-1335) by Bayarsaikhan Dashdondog: 270 pages; Open Access (Brill, 2011)

This book is an invitation to a journey to the medieval world, which, in author’s opinion, is the most picturesque period of human history to embark back to, and it is definitely one of the fascinating moments of the Great Mongol Empire. It is an interesting journey in many way: historically, geographically and culturally. It will take the reader from the Inner Asian plateau to the Caucasus, Anatolia, Middle and Near East; from a nomadic culture to sedentary civilizations; from a warrior’s mindset to the subjects’ survival policy.

The present work tries to understand the connection between the various aspects of East and West in Medieval times by exploring relations between two nations, the Armenians and the Mongols, who began interacting with each other during the thirteenth century. During that time the Mongols became widely known to the world for building the most extensive land empire in human history that stretched from the Pacific Ocean to the Adriatic Sea, covering mosts of Asia all the way to Korea, excluding India and Eastern Europe, but including Hungary.

Bayarsaikhan Dashdondog currently works at the History Department at the National University of Mongolia. Bayarsaikhan does research in History of Mongol Empire; Mongol-Armenian Relationship; History of Religion and Historiography of the Mongols. Her current project is 'Chancellery Practice of the Mongols.'

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Urban Hunters: Dealing and Dreaming in Times of Transition by Lars Hoger and Morton Axel Pederson; 288 pages; $85 (Yale University Press, 2019)

Urban Hunters is an Ethnography of the Mongolian capital, Ulaanbaatar, during the nation's transition from socialism to a market-based economic system. Following the Soviet collapse in 1991, Mongolia entered into a period of economic chaos characterized by wild inflation, disappearing banks and closing farms, factories and schools. During this time of widespread poverty, a generation of young adults came of age. In exploring the social, cultural and existential ramifications of a transition that has become permanent and acquired a life of its own, the authors present a new theorization of social agency in post- socialist as well as post-colonial contexts.

Lars Hoger is Associate Professor and Deputy Head at the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen. Morten Axel Pederson is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen and Vice Director of the Copenhagen Center for Social Data Science. 

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Mongolia: A Political History of the Land and its People by Michael Dillon; 232 pages; $29.95 (IB Tauris, 2019)

In the words of pre-publication material from the publisher, "Mongolia remains a beautiful barren land of spectacularly clothed horse riders, nomadic romance and windswept landscape. But modern Mongolia is now caught between two giants: China and Russia; and known to be home to enormous mineral resources they are keen to exploit. China is expanding economically into the region, buying up mining interests and strengthening its control over Inner Mongolia. 

"Michael Dillon, one of the foremost experts on the region, seeks to tell the modern history of this fascinating country. He investigates its history of repression, the slaughter of the country's Buddhists, its painful experiences under Soviet rule and dictatorship, and its history of corruption. But there is hope for its future and it now has a functioning parliamentary democracy which is broadly representative of Mongolia's ethnic mix. How long it can last is another question. Short, sharp and authoritative, Mongolia will become the standard text on the region as it begins to shape world affairs.

Michael Dillon was founding director of the Center for Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Durham where he taught modern Chinese history. He is a Fellow at the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Asiatic Society and was Visiting Fellow at Tsingha University in Beijing. He has travelled throughout China and Central Asia for over 40 years and speaks and reads both Chinese and Mongolian. He is the author of China: A Modern History.

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Le Droit Mongol Dans l'Etat Sino-Mandchou, 1644-1911: Entre autonomie et assimilation (Mongolian Law in the Sino-Manchu State, 1644-1911: Between Autonomie and Assimiliation) by Frederic Constant; (35 Euros); (Editions de Boccard, 2019)

According to the release information related to this just-published book in French, this volume "provides a comprehensive description of legislation enacted by the Qing government for the Mongols and subsequent problems of enforcement. Relying on a wealth of legal resources -- including pre-conquest Mongol codes, Qing legislation, and administrative regulations and judgements rendered both at the central and local levels of administration -- Le droit mongol examines the interplay between the legal realm and crucial questions such local autonomy, legal pluralism, poitical assimilation and center-periphery relation

"The author argues that in crafting and enforcing legislation that was specific to the Mongols, the Qing emphasized the traditional legal approaches inherited from the Ming and earlier dynasties, leading to the gradual displacement of much of the indigenous Mongol legal concepts and procedures. Despite forceful efforts by the Manchu state to control and normalize the administration of the Mongol region, such that it became an extension of China proper rather than the protectorate entrusted to the local Mongol aristocracy, and despite the impact of Han Chinese immigration; nonetheless, Mongolian laws, principles, and judicial practices did not disappear altogether. The result was a multi-layered and hybrid legal system that integrated indigenous Mongol, traditional, Chinese and Qing dynastic legal traditions and practices" 

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Several non-traditional books on Mongolia have been published this year or are anticipated in 2020. Though entirely non-academic in nature, some of these titles may nonetheless be of interest to ACMS members. 

Examples of the types of unusual, offbeat, interesting and at times intriguing English language books related in some way to Mongolia that find their way into print include Easy Mongolian Cookbook: Enjoy Authentic Mongolian Cooking with 50 Delicious Mongolian Recipies (Independently Published, 2019); The Mongolian Conspiracy by Rafael Bernal (Kindle Edition, 2019); Girl Forward: A Tale of One Woman's Unlikely Adventure in Mongolia by Heather Wallace (Water Horse Press, 2019); Tend My Sheep: A Veterinarian in Mongolia by Gerald Mitchum (Independently Published, 2019); and a new Lonely Planet Mongolian Phrase Book and Dictionary (Lonely Planet, 2020).