July 27 @ 4:00 pm – 5:15 pm
In this two-part talk, Nicholas Seay will discuss research on and in Tajikistan. The first part of the talk will highlight findings of his recent archival and oral history research, showing how the variety of rich sources reflect the impacts of Soviet agricultural policy. Documents, images, newspapers, unpublished and published studies, as well as interview excerpts illustrate how, in the second half of the 20th century, transformation of the agricultural sector directly affected the lives, labor, and environment for inhabitants of rural Tajikistan. The second part of the talk will focus on logistical aspects of conducting research in Central Asia, including practical planning, challenges, and other important considerations.
About the speaker: Nicholas Seay is a PhD candidate in History at Ohio State University and an alum of UW-Madison’s CREECA MA program. He is also a former student of CESSI
(Tajik 2019, Uzbek 2018). He is currently working on his dissertation, tentatively titled “Cotton Modernity: Neo-Materialism, Labor, and Environment in Late-Soviet Tajikistan, 1945-1991.” His research uses archival, library, and oral history research to explore changes in agricultural labor and environment in the late-Soviet period. Contact him at seay.27@osu.edu.