SIXTEENTH ANNUAL MONGOL CHILDREN'S FESTIVAL AND COMPETITION IN WASHINGTON, DC (June 2019)

The Sixteenth Annual Mongol Children's Festival will be celebrated in June 2019 in the Washington, DC area. Although details on time and place have not yet been finalized, the announcement is being made now for those interested in participating and offering support. Past festivals have received significant support from the Washington, DC area and beyond. For more information, visit this website.

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UNIVERSITY OF LIFE SCIENCES ANNOUNCES AGRICULTURAL CONFERENCE IN ULAANBAATAR (June 2019)

The School of Economics and Business at the University of LIfe Sciences is extending invitations to attend the sixth annual AVA Congress 2019 on Sustainable Agricultural Development -- Value Chains, Agriculture Markets and Trade, to be held June 17-19, 2019 in Ulaanbaatar.

The conference is especially aimed at those interested in sharing their research and ideas with academic researchers and agribusinesses from 20 countries. This year the Congress is highlighting sustainable agriculture, economics of grasslands, regional and rural development, value chains, trade and agribusiness. The Congress also includes a one-day trip into the countryside.

Those interested in more information should visit the conference website here.

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FUND RAISING UNDERWAY TO MAINTAIN AND SUSTAIN DOCUMENTATION OF MONGOLIAN MONASTERIES WEBSITE

Dwight Gee, President and Treasure of the Arts Council of Mongolia (ACM), sends the following message:

Thank you again for all your support of ACM, ACM-US and the Documentation of Mongolian Monastaries website that Pete Morrow helped conceive many years ago. As you probably know, thanks to ALOT of work by many volunteers, including most notably Sue Byrne, the tireless expert and proponent of the website -- its up, working well and used extensivelly by researchers, travel companies wanting to give more depth to their tours, and many, many young Mongolians wanting to learn more about their cultural heritage.

Things re working fine now, but to pay for the site hosting, maintenance and updates, we need to raise additional funds. We've launched an indiegogo.crowdfunding drive with a goal of $10,000. We're at about $2,000 right now. We are volunteers doing the work. The small company that is doing the tech work is donating a great share of their work, so the funds we raise will go straight into keeping this important website available for the coming years.

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ASIA POLITICS AND HISTORY ASSOCIATION (APHA) ANNOUNCES CONFERENCE IN ULAANBAATAR (September 2019)

The 2019 Annual Politics and History Association (APHA) conference will take place September 25-28 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. The conference is co-sponsored by Clarewood University and the local Mongolian organization Blue Banner Foundation as well as the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations and the Mongolia Society. 

The topic of this year's conference is "Challenges Confronting Asia Today: Nuclear Proliferation, Environmenta, Economic, Civilizational". Well-research scholarly papers of 15-20 pages for prospective publication in the APHA Journal are actively solicited. Presentations should be for approximately 30 minutes. Paper titles with a 150 word abstract should be sent to Dr. Mark Zhong (mzhong@clarewoodva.org) and Dr. Alicia Campi (usmagcampi@aol.com) by August 1.

The conference fee is $525 (double occupancy) or $600 (single occupancy) for all attendees including speakers, covering the venue fee, three hotel nights, airport arrival and departure and all food and receptions. Additional nights and flight costs are not covered.

Conference events include a half-day city tour and the official launch of Dr. Campi's new book Mongolia's Foreign Policy: Navigating a Changing World. An after-conference countryside excursion is available on September 28 for $60. Payment for the conference fee is required by August 15. Additional details include the hotel venue in UB as well as registration procedures will be forthcoming during the coming weeks

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QUERY FROM SCOTLAND-BASED ETHNOMUSICOLOGY PROJECT

Lisa Mitchell Nobel from Scotland is embarking on a personal six-month ethnomusicology project starting in Mongolia in summer 2019. In a recent query to ACMS, she stated "I am currently seeking contacts that may b e able to help me with some information and potentially some assistance to realize both practical and orgnizational aspects of the project".

For more information, visit the following website: www.lisemitchellnoble.com

Also, feel free to contact Lisa directly: lisemitchellnoble@hotmail.co.uk

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

BBC: How One Woman Beat Mining Giants and Saved Rare Snow Leopards, focused on Mongolian woman who was one of six winners of the 2019 Goldman Environmental Prize (April 29, 2019)

Smithsonian Magazine: Decades Long Effort to Protect World's Largest Sheep, focused on ongoing work related to Arglai sheep at Mongolia's Ikh Nart Nature Reserve with support from the Denver Zoological Foundation (April 25, 2019)

Billboard: The Hu Brings Mongolian Metal to Number One on Hard Rock Digital Song Chart, focused on the global phenomena of the four-member Mongolian rock band founded in 2016 that has gone viral with hits such as "Wolf Totem" and "Yuve Yuve Yu" (April 18, 2019)

Bloomberg: Genghis Khan's Biggest Fan is Testing Mongolia's Democracy, focused on concerns related to democracy in Mongolia under its new president (April 16, 2019)

Television Station WJHL: Former US Ambassador Visits ETSU for Unveiling of Mongolian Ger, focused on the official inauguration of a ger at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, TN (April 16, 2019)

Radio Free Asia: China Tries Ethnic Mongolian Historian for Genocide Book, in Secret, focused on the brief trial in Inner Mongolian on April 4 of historian Lhamjab A. Borijin (April 12, 2019)

Telegraph: Life as a Nomad in World's Least Crowded Country, focused on travel opportunities in Mongolia while also mentioning other sparsely populated countries (April 10, 2019)

Guardian: 'An Example to All': The Mongolian Herder Who Took On a Corporate Behometh and Won, focused on Oyu Tolgoi, Rio Tinto and a local group called the Gobi Soil Collecti e (April 8, 2019)  

OECD: Mongolia should strengthen its institutions and guarantee their independence in fight against corruption, focused on current issues related to good governance and corruption in Mongolia (April 4, 2019)

Washington Post: Here's How Democracy is Eroding in Mongolia, focused on politics, corruption and challenges to democracy in Mongolia (April 3, 2019)

World Population Review: Mongolia Population Review 2019, focusing on latest population figures for the country and placing Mongolia's current population at 3.17 million (March 30, 2019)

Mongolia Initiative at University of California-Berkeley: Points of Transition: Ovoo and the Ritual Developing of Religious, Ecological and Historical Politics in Inner Asia, including three videos on a conference on this subject in Berkeley, CA earlier this year (March 2, 2019)

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Anne F. Broadbridge, Women and the Making of the Mongol Empire; 355 pages ($71 Hardback; $31 Paperback); (Cambridge University Press, 2018)

Looking through the prism of distinguished women of the Mongol Empire such as the mother and senior wife of Chinggis Khan as well as less well known but no less interesting figures including his daughters and his conquered wives, this important book provides a new and valuable perspective on the role of women in the world's largest land empire. As Broadbridge demonstrates, women played an especially vital role in both the politics and the successions of the time, a role that continued to unfold in intriguing and sometimes surprising ways in the various Khanates following the breakup of the Mongolian empire.

Beatrice Manz (Tufts University) describes this book as "intelligent and original," adding that it offers "new insights" and takes the study of women in the Mongol Empire to a "new level". Peter Jackson (Keele University) commends Broadbridge for her exploration of the "highly complex place of women and marriage in imperial politics," adding that it "helps to make sense of the alignments within the imperial dynasty". Timothy May (University of North Georgia) describes Women and the Making of the Mongol Empire as a "timely and unique contribution to the scholarship of the Mongol Empire which will forever change our understanding of the Mongolian elite".

Anne F. Broadbridge is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. She is a member of the Middle East Studies Association and the Central Eurasian Studies Society. Her previous book is titled Kingship and Ideology in the Islamic and Mongol Worlds (Cambridge University Press, 2008). 

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Elizabeth Endicott, Mongolia, 1978-2017: Memoirs of a Part-Time Mongolist; 408 pages ($35 Hardback if ordered directly from the publisher); Shires Press, 2019

Elizabeth (Tina) Endicott first visited Mongolia in 1978, spending the next four decades documenting the Mongolian way of life through photographs, books and essays. Her first book Mongolian Rule in China (Harvard University Press) examined how a thirteenth century nomadic people estalbished and ruled an empire that included its huge neighbor to the south. Her more recent research resulted in two other books on Mongolia and has centered on twentieth century Russo-Mongolian trade relations as well as modern day land use in Mongolia.

This fascinating memoir is based on Endicott's fourteen visits to Mongolia, beginning in 1978 and continuing through 2017, years in which Mongolia witnessed massive and unprecedented change. Moving behond the academic to the personal, she provides a unique perspective based on her own observations, analysis and experiences. The book also  includes photographs that track many of these changes over time. Above all, Endicott's appreciation for Mongolia's culture, history and way of life is apparent on every page.

Elizabeth Endicott is Professor Emirita of History at MIddlebury College in Middlebury, VT. A long-time supporter of ACMS, she has also served as Secretary on the ACMS Executive Board.

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Alicia Campi, Mongolia's Foreign Poilcy: Navigating a Changing World; 349 pages; ($42.50 Hardback); (Lynne Reiner, 2019)

A long-time observer (and at times participant) in Mongolian affairs, Alicia Campi's new book will be welcomed by those who have long awaited a comprehensive overview and analysis of Mongolian foreign policy -- including economic poilcy -- since abandoning Soviet-style socialism in 1990 and moving toward a market-based parliamentary democracy.

Campi herself first visited Mongolia in 1975, later participating in discussions in Tokyo during 1985-1986 that eventually led to the establishment of diplomatic ties between the US and Mongolia in 1987. Posted in Ulaanbaatar as a US diplomat in 1990, she witnessed the final months of peaceful street demonstrations that placed the country on the path toward democracy. She has followed the ups and downs of political, economic and social developments in Mongolia ever since, visiting Mongolia on multiple occasions over the last three decades.

Relations between the United States and Mongolia are part of the story that Campi presents in this book and her narrative makes good use of the oral histories of several former US diplomats including former US Ambassadors to Mongolia that are publicly available in the Library of Cngress. But she goes much further, including as well a detailed analysis of Mongolia's foreign relaitons with China, Russia and a number of "Third Neighbors," presenting the latter as a particularly intriguing aspect of Mongolia's post-Soviet approach.

Her inclusion of economic policy as part of Mongolia's engagement with the rest of the world is also welcome, resulting in commentary that at times also delves into domestic concerns. especially when looking at important issues such as mineral development, resource nationalism, energy policy and regional integration. In addition, her detailed chapter on "Soft Power" provides a comprehensive description of Mongolia's efforts to shape a "Mongolian brand" on the world stage.

Alicia Campi is President Emeritus of the Mongolia Society. A lecturer on North East Asia at the Foreign Service Institute, she is also a Research Fellow in the Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and Adjunct Professor involved in SAIS's Asia Programs.

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Esther Jacobson-Tepfer, The Life of Two Valleys in the Bronze Age: Rock Art in the Altai Mountains of Mongolia; 329 pages; ($66.98 Hardback; $60.79 Paperback); Luminare Press, 2019)

This well written and wonderfully illustrated book provides a useful addition to the continued documentation and analysis of the Bronze Rock rock art in Mongolia. Numerous maps, illustrations and color photographs, combined with a text that is both evocative and informative, give readers an intriguing perspective on one of the most visible and enduring aspects of Mongolia's historical and cultural landscape.

As the book notes, "The rock art of northwestern Mongolia preserves vital documentation of prehistoric life in its transition from a hunting-foraging economy to pastoralism and finally, with the adoption of horse riding, to full mounted nomadism. This pictorial record is most abundant within two long river valleys: those of Tsagaan Gol and Baga Oigor Gol. Their location in the high Altai mountains marks the nexus between North and Central Asia, taiga and steppe, and the center of fundamental economic and social changes from the end of the Ice Age through the Bronze and early Iron Ages".

Among the many interesting comments is Jacobson-Tepfer's observation on what is "not said": "The subject of violent conflict is avoided, as is any indication of death or dying of either men or animals". As this example suggests, her interest goes beyond describing what she had observed in western Monglia over multiple visits beginning in the 1990s; rather, the central intent of this study is "to seek out the ancient life of the valleys, to recreate the way they were lived and understood in a remote past'.

Esther Jacobson-Tepfer is Kerns Professor Emeritus in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Oregon. After receiving her doctorate in Chinese art history from the University of Chicago, she expanded her research to the art and archaeology of North Asia's nomadic world.Jacobson-Tepfer has spent more than twenty field seasons in the Altai Mountains of Russia and Mongolia, recording and mapping rock art and surface monuments from the Bronze and Iron Ages.

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Saskia Abrahms-Kavunenko, Enlightment and the Gasping City: Mongolian Buddhism at a Time of Environmental Dissaray; 265 pages; ($95 Hardback; $26.95 Paperback); (Cornell University Press, 2019)

According to pre-release material provided by Cornell University Press, "With air pollution now intimately affecting every resident of Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, Saskia Abrahms Kavunenko seeks to understand how, as a physical constant throughout the winter months, the murky and obscuring nature of air pollution has become an active part of Mongolian religious and ritual life.

Enlightenment and the Gasping City identifies air pollution as a boundary between the physical and the immaterial, showing how air pollution impresses itself on the urban environment as stagnation and blur. She explores how air pollution and related phenomena exist in dynamic tension with Buddhist ideas and practices concerning purification, revitalisation and enlightenment. By focusing on light, its intersections and oppositions, she illuminates Buddhist practices and beliefs as they interact with the pressing urban issues of air pollution, post-socialist ecnomic vacillations, urban development, nationalism and climate change.

Early comment has been positive, with Johann Elverskog (Southern Methodist University) describing it as "the best book I have read on the revival of Buddhism -- or even more broadly -- of religion in contemporary Mongolia" and Martin Mills (University of Aberdeen) stating that the author "successfully captures core aspects of religious life in Mongolia at a key stage in its post-communist transition". 

Saskia Abrahms-Kavunenko is a Teaching Fellow at New York University, Shanghai and an Associate at the Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology

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Thomas T. Allsen, The Steppe and the Sea: Pearls in the Mongol Empire; 240 pages; ($34 Hardback); (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019),

As advance publication material describes it, "Pearls, valued for aesthetic, economic, religious and political reasons, were the ultimate luxury good of the Middle Ages, and the Chingissid imperium, the largest contiguous land empire in history, was their unmatched collector, promoter and conveyer". 

Against this backdrop, this book looks at the importance of pearls as both a luxury good and as a political investment in the Mongolian Empire, beginning with its establishment in 1206 and continuing through its expansion, drivision and ultimate decline in 1370. Unusually, it also tracks the cultural and commercial interaction between the "northern steppes" and the "southern seas".

Pearls are at the center of this narrative, with Allsen showing "how the very act of forming such a vast nomadic empire required the massive accumulation, management and movement of prestige goods and how this process brought into being new regimes of consumption on a continental scale". Allsen further suggests that "overland and seaborne trade flourished simultaneously, forming a dynamic exchange system that moved commodities from east to west and north to south, including an enormous quantity of pearls".

According to J.J.L. Gommans (University of London), Allen's focus on pearls "offers new insights into the wider socioeconomic and cultural history of the Mongol Empire". He further describes this book as an "extremely rich study of the process of southernization and the interaction between the maritme and the continental trade".

The late Thomas Allsen was Professor Emeritus of the College of New Jersey and wrote several books including Commodity and Exchange in the Mongol Empire: A Cultural History of Islamic Textiles and Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia. He is also the author of The Royal Hunt in Eurasian History, also available from University of Pennsylvania Press.

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Matthew W. King, Ocean of Milk, Ocean of Blood: A Mongolian Monk in the Ruins of the Qing Empire; 304 pages; ($65 Hardback); (Columbia University Press, 2019)

Against the backdrop of the fall of the Qing Empire involving upheaval and change in Mongolia, monks faced a "chaotic and increasingly uncertain world". This book details the story of one of those monks who sought to "defend Buddhist monasticism in revolutionary times, revealing an unexplored landscape of countermodern Buddhism beyond old imperial formations and the newly invited national subject".

In part, King looks at the perspective provided by Sawaa Damdin (1867-1937), "a historian, mystic, logician and pilgrim whose life and works straddles the late Qing period and its socialist aftermath, between the monastery and the party scientific academy". Insights from a wide range of figures with whom Damdin had contact are provided, ranging from the Dalai Lama to mystic monks in China to European scholars. As the book describes it, Damdin worked for three decades to "protect Buddhist tradition against what he called the 'bloody tides' of science, social mobility and socialist partyi antagonism".

According to pre-publication material provided by Columbia University Press, this is the "first book to explore countermodern Buddhist monastic thought and practice along the Inner Asian frontiers during these tumultous years," thus shedding light on "previously unknown religious legacies of the Ching" while also providing "an unparalleled view of Buddhist life in the revolutionary period".

Matthew W. King is assistant professor in Transnational Buddhism in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California-Riverside

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Prajakti Kalra, The Silk Road and the Political Economy of the Mongol Empire; 163 paes ($138 Hardback); Routledge, 2018)

According to Prajatki Kalra, "The Eurasia region and the Silk Road today occupy much of the discourse on globalisation, international and regional cooperation and world trade.". She goes on to note that "the politics of today which engages with the past continues to be colored by misunderstandings and misrepresentations driven by modern frameworks and principles that do not necessarily reflect either the regional or individual actors. The book attempts to mitigate these distortions and takes a historical approach to inform present-day discourses on Eurasia as a consequence of Mongol governance". 

Individual chapters cover such topics as "The Rise of Chinggis Khan," "Institutional Framework of Mongol Eurasia," "The Place of Religion in Mongol Eurasia"; "Mongol Cities of Eurasia"; "Trade and Economic Relations in Mongol Eurasia," and "Echoes of the Past in Present-Day Eurasia". Based on Kaira's comprehensive analysis, this book "demonstrates that the Mongol Empire anticipated many of the networks and connections which exist in the region at present."

Prajakti Kalra is a Research Fellow at the Central Asia Forum, Jesus College, University of Cambridge