SIT/WORLD LEARNING MONGOLIA STUDY ABROAD PROGRAM ANNUAL SEMINAR
(June 5, 2018)

The SIT/World Learning Study Abroad Program in Mongolia will host its annual Independent Study/Internship Presentation Seminar in Ulaanbaatar City Public Library (D. Natsagdorj Library) on Seoul Street beginning at 9 AM on Tuesday, June 5.

The schedule for this year's SIT Independent Study/Internship Presentation is as follows:

9:00 AM
Opening Remarks

Mrs. S. Ulziijargal, Academic Director,

SIT Study Abroad Mongolia
(A World Learning Program)

9:10 AM
Of Bread and Dignity: The Culture and Identity of Food

Madeline Williams,  University of Arkansas

9:40 AM
Impact of Mongolian National Federation of Pasture User Groups on Undurshireet Soum

Austin Jackson,  University of Arkansas

10:10 AM
Coming in Hot: Motor Vehicles, Capitalism, and Modernization

Thea Bergen,  University of Oregon

10:40 AM
LHAMOUR: The Business of Inclusivity

Julieta Cervantes,  Knox College

11:10 AM
Break

11:45 PM
Raising a Winner: Contemporary Horse Racing Practices in Mongolia

Lindsay Cohen,  Lake Forest College

12:15 PM
Nature and Nomads: Service Approach to Authentic and Quality Mongolian Tours

Jesse Shircliff,  Gettysburg College

12:45 PM
Sexuality and Society in Mongolia: A Culture of Silence

Abbott Hays,  University of Illinois at Chicago

For more details on SIT Study Abroad programs, see this link 

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NEW DOCUMENTARY:
TRANSITION: NOMADS AT RISK

Sas Carey from Nomadicare is working this summer on Nomadicare's fourth feature documentary, Transition: Nomads at Risk. It will explore the life of Khongoroo who grew up as a Dukha reinder herder and is now a medical doctor. The film will "follow her wherever her life leads," depicting how she "manages the transition to another life, how she keeps connected to her people and what she holds and loses of her culture as she joins the modern world".


For more details, contact Sas Carey at sas@nomadicare.ORG

Nomadicare website:
www.nomadicare.org

Link to trailer for new documentary: Transition: Nomads at Risk

Link to trailer for 2016 documentary:  Migration

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ADVANCE NOTICE:
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON DEMOCRACY IN THE 21ST CENTURY
(July 9-10, 2018)

Ulaanbaatar has been a chosen to host the International Conference on Democracy on July 9-10, based partly on Mongolia's unique experience of democratic transiton. This year also marks the 10th anniversary of the Independent Research Institute of Mongolia (IRIM), the conference organizer. Other sponsors included the World Society Foundation (WSF)

The conference language will be English. There is no registration fee. A total of 16 international scholars from 14 different countries will join 8 Mongolian scholars in presenting papers, the best of which will be published as part of the WSF's ongoing book series titled "World Society Studies". Travel grants will be issued for three Mongolian scholars abroad who wish to participate. The deadline for applications is May 4.

Original work from both Mongolian and international scholars is welcome, especially related to conference focus areas: (1) urban/rural cleavages and democracy; (2) civil society and democracy; and (3) extractive economics, resource-rich countries and democracy.

For more information, visit the following website:  www.irim.mn

Feel free to also contact the following e-mail address:  Erdenetsetseg@irim.man

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The Great Mongolian Bowling League of the United States of America by Ed Borowsky; 128 pages; paperback: $9.95; kindle: $5.95 (Dovetail Alliance Publishing, 2017)

The Great Mongolian Bowling League provides an interesting example of the way in which various ideas of Mongolia set their mark on popular American culture, one that goes beyond the usual themes focused on nature, throat singing and the endless steppe.

As the publisher decribes it, "For a change of scenery from their Florida mobile home, longtime roommates Harold and Murray go to Disney for the weekend. But these two senior citizens find more excitement than they bargain for when they visit the bowling alley next to their motel on International Drive".

Kirkus Reviews picks up the narrative of this interesting comic novella further, noting that the two retirees "meet Tomorbaatar and Kulan, two young Mongolian-Americans practicing for the first-ever Mongolian Bowling League tournament. Harold and Murray are invited to play with them after they lose two teammates, but when Harold unexpectedly bowls a perfect game, he upsets a fix by the bowling-alley owners . . . As Harold continues to bowl miraculously well, he finds redemption for events in his past, brings attention to Mongolia and its people, and finds a way to make everyone happy".

According to the publisher, "Action unfolds in a beautiful comedic tale that illustrates that although we come from worlds apart, we share a common humanity. Can Harold roll perfection and live? The outcome will impact millions and warm you heart".

Former businessman Ed Borowsky states that he was "inspired to write this debut novella after meeting a Mongolian taxi driver, who told him about the important role bowling has played in forming and sustaining communities of new Mongolian Americans at a time when many were struggling to find their place in a new land". Now retired, he lives in Winter Park, Florida. 

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My Mongolia: A Personal Encounter by J. Peter Morrow: 384 pages; paperback: 30,000 togrogs (Ulaanbaatar: Nepko Publishing, 2017)

Many travellers and long-time residents of Mongolia during the last seventeen years will be familiar with Pete Morrow, the international banker from Arizona who arrived in Ulaanbaatar in 2000 to turn around the struggling and twice bankrupted Agricultural Bank of Mongolia.
His herculean task was to help lead the struggling 80-year-old institution into the twentyfirst century and turn it into a competitive and sustainable modern institution. Under his leadership, the bank was indeed transformed into today's Xaan Bank with hundreds of branches scattered across the country. Upon completion of this project, Pete stayed in Mongolia and made it his home.

My Mongolia is the very personal account of Pete's journey, starting with the details of his work in turning the Agricultural Bank into Xaan Bank. It also includes interesting and informative details of his travels as well as his political, economic and cultural encounters with Mongolia over nearly two decades, including his engagement with Mongolian artists, his role in founding the Xaan Bank art collection and his involvement in the Arts Council of Mongolia. Both well written and well organized, My Mongolia stands as a lasting legacy to Pete's large-than-life personality as well as his life, work, interest and commitment to the country.

The late J. Peter Morrow (1947-2016) was educated at Harvard, Georgetown and Loyola University. Prior to moving to Mongolia in 2000, he worked in Romania, Kazakhstan and Ukraine. He was a founding member of the Business Council of Mongolia and helped establish the Arts Council of Mongolia. In 2007 he received the Polar Star, Mongolia's highest civilian award, from the President of Mongolia.

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Ceremony in Stone: The Biluut Petroglyph Complex: Prehistoric Rock Art in the Mongolian Altai by Richard D. Kortum: 218 pages; paperback; 28,700 togrogs (Ulaanbaatar: Nepko Publishing, 2018)

This interesting and attractive large-size book provides another important contribution toward documenting and preserving one of Mongolia's most fascinating artistic legacies -- petroglyphs. Based on photographs, observations and records taken during multiple trips to the Altai over more than twelve years, it focuses specifically on the Biluut complex in the northwest corner of Mongolia's westernmost Bayan Ulgii aimag.

Kortum and his colleagues have recorded some 12,000 petroglyphs in Biluut, almost all of them found in six separate sites spread over a wide area. Most are attributed to the Bronze age. Some twenty different types of animals are depicted. One image shows a chariot and charioteer in full gallop, racing just behind another speeding horse and rider. Very unusually, another image depicts a woman giving birth.

Kortum's explanatory text, provided in English and Mongolian, provides a useful overview of rock art in Mongolia, especially as it relates to the Biluut complex situated not far from the town of Ulgii. The study of this ancient site, seemingly used as a place for ritual and ceremonial activity for thousands of years, remains ongoing. However, Ceremony in Stone will give general readers a highly informative early written and visual introduction to what is clearly one of the most impressive rock art sites in Mongolia, one that very much needs to be preserved and maintained for future generations.

Dr. Richard D. Kortum is Professor Emeritus of East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, TN.

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Information Security: Emerging Issues in Theory and Practice: Proceedings from an International Conference sponsored by the Mongolian Ministry of Defense, Institute for Defense Studies and Mongolian National Defense University: 105 pages; paperback; no price given (Ulaanbaatar: Mongolian National Defense University, 2018)

This slim volume, issued with a print run of only 150 copies, provides a useful example of one of the series of such conferences sponsored by the Mongolian National Defense University in recent years, in this case focused explicitly on information security concerns (previous such conferences have focused on a number of related issues including broader economic, strategic and security issues as they pertain to Northeast Asia).

Topics covered in Information Security reflect the interests of various speakers, with several researchers from China, Russia and South Korea providing their perspectives. Researchers with an interest in Mongolia will be especially drawn to presentations specifically covering Mongolia, given the importance of information security world-wide and the fact that Mongolia too is beginning to have to address them, with a view toward shaping new approaches even as information technology continues to change.

More broadly, this just-released volume reflects interest on the part of the Mongolian National Defense University to address emerging security concerns writ large, in part by organizing annual conferences such as this and then publishing the proceedings afterwards to help make them available to a wider audience.

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Volume 19 (2017) of the journal Inner Asia, published twice annually by Brill in Leiden, contains a number of interesting articles on Mongolia, including Orhon Myadar's "In the Soviet Shadow: Soviet Colonial Politics in Mongolia" (pp 5-28); Denise A. Austin's "The 'Third Spreading': Origins and Development of Protestant Evangelical Christianity in Contermorary Mongolia" (pp. 64-90); and Rebekah Plueckhan's "The Power of Faulty Paperwork: Bureacratic Negotiation, Land Access and Personal Innovation in Ulaanbaatar" (pp. 91-90).

 

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In the Wake of the Mongols: The Making of a New Social Order in North China, 1200-1600 by Jinping Wang; 370 pages; $49.95 (Harvard University Press, 2018)

Issued as Number 116 in the Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series and with a publication date of November 2018, this book recounts what the publisher describes as "the riveting story of how northern Chinese men and women adapted to these trying circumstances and interacted with their alien Mongol conquerers to create a drastically new social order. To construct this story the book uses a previously unknown source of inscriptions recorded on stone tablets".  

As the publisher also notes, "Jinping Wang explores a north China where Mongol patrons, Daoist priests, Buddhist monks, and sometimes single women—rather than Confucian gentry—exercised power and shaped events, a portrait that upends the conventional view of imperial Chinese society. Setting the stage by portraying the late Jin and closing by tracing the Mongol period’s legacy during the Ming dynasty, she delineates the changing social dynamics over four centuries in the northern province of Shanxi, still a poorly understood region".

Jinping Wang is Assistant Professor of History at the National University of Singapore

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Proverbes & Dictons de Mongolie ("Proverbs and Sayings of Mongolia"); translated and interpreted by Marc Alaux and Charlotte Marchina; calligraphy by Togoobatyn Jamyansuren; 96 pages; 13 Euros (GeoRama Editions, 2018)

This book is part of a series of similar French-languague volumes presenting proverbs and sayings from Uzbekistan, Japan and elsewhere. According to the publisher, "Organic, trivial and sometimes funny, as well as wise and distanced, the Mongolian proverbs transport us to the heart of the steppe: on horseback, in the smell and warmth of the herd, in the middle of the hills, in the intimacy of the yurt . . . They immerse us in the daily life of nomadic pastoralists, among the people of Genghis Khan. And miracuously, these wind-chopped maxims of the great Asian meadows echo our western sedentary lives". 

Marc Alaux, born in 1976, was an archeologist before becoming an editor and bookseller.  He travelled for two and a half years in Mongolia, walking 7,000 kilometers. He is the author of several books including "Under the Yurts of Mongolia".

Charlotte Marchina, born in 1987, is an anthropologist who studied the language and culture of Mongolia for several years. Her doctoral thesis is on nomadic pastoralism.

Togoobatyn Jamyansuren, born in 1974, is recognized as one of the most prominent calligraphers in Mongolia. He is also an artist, illustrator, engraver and silversmith whose works have been widely exhibited in Mongolia, France and elsewhere.

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The Silk Road (Volume 15), edited by Daniel Waugh; 218 pages; free download (Annual journal of the Silk Road Foundation)

Volume 15 of the on-line journal The Silk Road covers a range of material and includes numerous photos, maps, drawings and other images. Articles also cover a range of subjects including ancient fortresses in Afghanistan's Wakhan region; caravanserais in the Mongol Golden Horde; and recent discoveries at a Turkic fortress in Kazakhstan. Other topics include a new analysis of the use of silver coins in Gaochang along the Northern Silk Road and articles about cross-cultural exchange: a ruler in Egypt who recognized his Central Asian heritage; items in museum collections connected with the “migration” of centaurs across Asia; connections involving Unified Silla Korea with the West; the deposit in a museum in the Urals of a relic from Timurid Samarkand; and the Chingissid legacy in post-Mongol East Asia. Photo essays cover Sasanian reliefs in Iran; the legacy of the Liao; and the importance of water across the Silk Roads. Finally, Volume 15 incude symposia reports and several book reviews and notices.

Volume 15 also contains a listing of the contents of the first fifteen issues of The Silk Road covering the period 2003 through 2017, an invaluable resource and especially valuable contribution for all those interested in scholarship on Central Asia and Mongolia, some of which is difficult to access and not always widely available.  

Volume 15 is freely available on line at: https://edspace.american.edu/silkroadjournal/wp-content/uploads/sites/984/2018/01/srjournal_v15.pdf>, or alternatively at: <http://www.silkroadfoundation.org/newsletter/vol15/srjournal_v15.pdf>

Print copies, sent free of charge to academic libraries, should be in the mail next month. Back numbers are also available. Volume 15 is the last issue that is also being printed in hard copy; future issues will only be available as an open access on-line publication.    

This is the final volume The Silk Road edited by Daniel Waugh (now editor emeritus) at the University of Washington. Future volumes will be edited by Professor Justin Jacobs at American University in Washington, DC.  All submissions and correspondence regarding future volumes should be addressed to him at: <jjacobs@american.edu>

Finally, please note that past issues of The Silk Road are available at a newly created website (all new volumes will be posted only at this website):
<https://edspace.american.edu/silkroadjournal/>