The Uyghur filmmaker Ikram Nurmehmet Ikram is behind bars on political charges. Shelly Kraicer reviews his four short films, and explores what they tell us about how “ethnic minority” artists can—and cannot—work inside China's system: www.chinafile.com/re...

Strange choices from the university whose library is building America's biggest collection of Uyghur books. And a press that published @seanroberts.bsky.social The War on the Uyghurs. press.princeton.edu/books/paperb... library.princeton.edu/about/librar...

Author copy fresh out of the box! I'm shaking! @uofmpress.bsky.social made the publication process so smooth! And huge thanks for hosting an open access version, which will be available on my official publication date: August 5. But if you'd rather buy a hard copy, use code UMWEB30 for 30% off!

This summer, June 7-August 7, I'll be running an online course in "Introduction to Chaghatay!" 12 meetings. $280 for the whole thing. Open access textbook + videos to walk you through grammar and readings. Fees will support GW's Uyghur Studies Initiative. Apply here! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

They’re back!! ❤️😭🫡

My friend and mentor Orville Schell puts very clearly what many people with experience in 20th century China are thinking: The parallels with the nihilism and chaos-for-its-own-sake of the Cultural Revolution years. www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/d...

Available today: a report, authored by myself and my friend and colleague @davidstroup.bsky.social , exploring the aims and impacts of the sinicisation of Islam campaign in Hui communities. See here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Monday, Nov 18, 4:00–5:00 Eastern Time/10:00–11:00 CET, we'll host an online talk by Prof. Don Wyatt on Africans in Early Modern China! Register here. www.eventbrite.com/e/through-po... Hosted by the Sigur Center for Asian Studies/East Asia NRC

Um, "Sinology" 🀄, I guess? (Emoji for labeling purposes.) *Two* positive reviews of my Tarikh-i Ḥamidi translation came out this week! From Jun Sugawara in the JAS: doi.org/10.1215/0021... From Tristan Brown in the Journal of Chinese History: doi.org/10.1017/jch....

"An ideologically motivated effort to silence viewpoints and remove resources and information on gender on the New College campus." My statement at PEN America on New College literally tossing the library of its student-led gender and diversity center into a dumpster: pen.org/press-releas...

sometimes it consoles me to remember whatever work I do today, it cannot be worse than the Cybertruck

The June 2024 issue of Late Imperial China is out! muse.jhu.edu/issue/52704 We have four articles on gender, agriculture, forestry, and suicide: You Wang (Chicago), "Women Till and Women Weave: Rice, Cotton, and the Gendered Division of Labor in Jiangnan" #Qing ... (1/4)

The Sigur Center for Asian Studies at GW seeks an Assistant Director (Taiwan specialist)! ~25% research and ~75% admin. Starts August. AD would report to me as director and help lead a great budget and events team. Taiwan expertise is essential, as is experience managing budgets and writing grants.

“UCLA’s administration has taken a decidedly hands-off approach to its student protesters, allowing them to continue their peaceful assembly. Seeing it’s possible to proceed without violence makes it even clearer that the cops and administrators harming students are making an active choice.”

I've said this several times but it is worth repeating: You don't ask an LLM something, you are giving it a prompt. You don't get back an answer, you get plausible sounding text. Using the incorrect words for what they do allows the people peddling the technology to get away with ridiculous claims.

Hey everyone! If you're feeling generous, today is the day to give to the Uyghur Studies Initiative at GW! For us, a little bit goes a very long way. Here are some successes from our first year as an endowed initiative: 1. We teach Uyghur language! 2. Summer grad student research funding! (con't)

I'm really proud that we at the Sigur Center for Asian Studies at GWU can offer this to our students. This and our endowment-supported Uyghur language classes make, I think, a strong beginning for the Uyghur Studies Initiative.

A reminder for those who still haven’t understood: ChatGPT and other LLMs are designed to write language that matches patterns found in existing texts so the generated text sounds plausible. It absolutely does not query for “facts” in the way that we have come to think of “googling” information.

People's Daily have created a set of "digital hosts" from different ethnic minority groups to introduce the Two Sessions. The results are creepy AF. politics.people.com.cn/n1/2024/0302...

People who claim private companies are more efficient than the government have never tried to talk to their insurance company

I keep bringing this up in other contexts, but Duke hired the same consultants that are gutting education across the country. West Virginia University was in the news recently for having a ton of programs cut, too. Same consultant - Huron Consulting is going door to door gutting universities.

David Brophy's translation of Kashgari's In Remembrance of the Saints has won the Hanan Prize for Translation! Nicole Willock's Lineages of the Literary got the Smith Inner Asia Book Prize! Plus an honorable mention for Lawrence Zhang's Power for a Price! So happy for friends and colleagues. :)

Re-upping my announcement here: I’m going to be presenting to GWU’s China Peripheries Seminar tomorrow (Feb 14). Thanks to @ericschluessel.bsky.social for the invite. Registration and info for the zoom link listed below: t.co/YYOZTyCGLt

I wanted to call your attention to a new endeavor initiated by Annie Zhang 張潔平 and me: a non-fiction translation short-term fellowship, building on the wonderful work of Frontline 在場非虛構獎學金！ Details here: https://www.frontlinefellowship.io/translationfellowship

Thursday's China Peripheries Seminar, online 1:00–3:00 PM Eastern, features Emily Yeh on "Development and the Environment in Tibet" and Guldana Salimjan on "Ecology and Settler Colonialism in Xinjiang!" I'm so proud to be putting two of the scholars I admire most in the spotlight. Sign up here!

On the Bird App, I've suddenly been followed by a bunch of pro-Falun Gong accounts and a bunch of anti-Falun Gong bots. To be clear, nothing—NOTHING—can make me go see Shenyun.

Upcoming: Sigur Center's China Peripheries Seminar! Zoom series on pressing contemporary issues re: Tibet, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang/East Turkestan, and Islam in China. Speakers are all scholars with extensive on-the-ground experience who take on their topics from critical perspectives. Sign up:

Launching the Chinese translation of Land of Strangers in Taiwan! Online Book Launch:《異鄉人之地：清帝國在新疆的教化工程》 時間｜10:00-12:00, January 27, 2024 (UTC/GMT+8) 主講｜許臨君（That's me!，喬治華盛頓大學現代中國史副教授） 與談｜蔡偉傑（國立中正大學歷史學系助理教授） Registration: reurl.cc/XqEbER

4-year PhD scholarship at SOAS through Rachel Harris' project "Maqām Beyond Nation."

Obvious but bears repeating, loudly and often: "Fund Chinese language programs more generously at American universities and high schools, and fund researchers studying China’s military, political system, economy, languages, culture and history." What we do requires money. We need more.

"... Or, to use a term that every other normal worker in the US uses to describe their workplace under these conditions: you are suffering from the effects of intentional systemic understaffing." contingentmagazine.org/2023/01/07/a...

This gives me life. That is, Brendan O'Kane's posts on poetry translation remind me why I got into this field to begin with, where we can and ought to find joy in the work, and how we can push ourselves to do better by being a little bolder. I agree with the spicy footnote.

Is there a critical mass of people here? 🤔 Please retweet this if you think I should start posting books here!

I wrote about the world's favourite Chinese sci-fi series and why it's loved by the authoritarian minded techno-nationalists, anti-feminists & opponents of social justice in China. the books are super fun tho. give it a read if you haven't already.

OMG, this made me so, so happy. "Boods" ❤️

📢It's Pub Day for Leftover Women, 10th Anniversary Edition! Bloomsbury has a 30% off sale now so books are only $16.06 if you order from the website: www.bloomsbury.com/us/leftover-...

I had the honor of sitting down with the Tarim Talks podcast! We talked about the Tarikh-i Ḥamidi and Uyghur history and historiography. Watch on YouTube: youtu.be/-1DwZY2b1Cc?... Listen on the Tarim Network website: www.thetarimnetwork.com/podcast/epis...

Today was the first meeting of GW’s extracurricular Research Skills for China Historians series. This is basically my way of offering Qing/Republican docs in a decentralized, no-cost form. I hope this can turn into a freely available “Docs+” curriculum for the majority of grad students not at Ivies.

I'm launching the Tarikh-i Ḥamidi this Thursday, 1:00 Eastern time, in person in DC and over Zoom! Sign up here to join the fun. docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Switching to shorter, more regular posts over on Stories from a Burning House with some of a Qing dynasty teenage girl’s favorite poems and stories about cats — starting today with “The Five Virtues of the Cat.”

What books need to get written? My short list: 1. New history of the Nian 2. Monograph on the Yarkand Khanate 3. Multilingual history of Ili, with at least a chapter on the Ili Sultanate (I notice that these are all projects that require significant spadework to uncover complex social realities.)

We're launching the Tarikh-i Ḥamidi at GW on November 16, 1:00–2:30 Eastern! Register for in-person or hybrid attendance here: t.ly/8HJph

I am very glad to see my latest article in @ERSjournal out #OpenAccess today! In it I examine #Islamophobia against #HuiMuslims in response to the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan in ‘20. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Thinking of doing "let's play"-style YouTube videos where, instead of playing a chill video game, I work through manuscripts. Would talk about paleography, grammar, parsing, vocab, and organization of the text, and along the way transcribe, annotate, and draft a translation/synopsis. Useful or nah?

Whenever Xi Jinping comes up with a new concept

The ANOR Central Asia short-book series is back! Seeking MA-thesis-length humanities & social science works in German or English on former Soviet Union, Xinjiang/East Turkestan, & Afghanistan. www.degruyter.com/serial/anor-...

This installment of the Uyghur Bulletin is for Banned Books Week: