Transitions: Examining Changing Regimes of Sexuality in Post-Soviet Muslim Republics

• Antragsteller: Professor Dr. Timothy Nunan
• Fachliche Zuordnung: Allgemeine und vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft; Kulturwissenschaft ; Islamwissenschaft, Arabistik, Semitistik ; Neuere und Neueste Geschichte (einschl. Europäische Geschichte der Neuzeit und Außereuropäische Geschichte) ; Theater- und Medienwissenschaften
• Förderung: Förderung seit 2024
• Projektkennung: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 547531808

The project brings together an international, interdisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Leeds (United Kingdom) and the University of Regensburg (Germany), as well as research partners from the region, in order to collaboratively examine cultural and political shifts in the countries of the Caucasus and Central Asia where Islam is a dominant religion, taking Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan as principal case studies. In particular, the project is concerned with how discourses around religion and faith, on the one hand, and gender and sexuality, on the other, played a role in these countries’ negotiations of nationhood and global citizenship in the last quarter of the twentieth century. The project is jointly funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC, UK) and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, Germany).The project looks at the major geopolitical and cultural transformations of this period from the perspective of these countries, enriching our understanding of transnational histories. Spanning the disciplines of Art History, Cultural Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, History, International Relations, Literary Studies, and Media Studies, this pioneering research analyses political, legal, and media discourses alongside artistic and literary manifestations of ‘transitions’ in Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan. The term ‘transitions’ signifies two interconnected processes: (1) political and cultural re-orientations that occurred in the context of shifting centres of power; and (2) artistic re-imaginings of cultural heritage and creation of new or revised practices, communities and institutions.The project recognises that religion and secularism play an important role in the production of frameworks of belonging; however, the project considers Islam predominantly in cultural terms. It approaches the notion of ‘Muslim Republics’ through a critical lens as a discursive construct, whilst celebrating the cultural diversity of Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan. Whilst these cases have been selected, the project does not draw comparisons between these two countries, but instead considers transregional and international political, legal, cultural, literary and artistic exchanges with multiple actors in the region, such as Iran, the Russian Federation and Türkiye, and beyond the region, such as the West. Moreover, the two countries are thought of not in ethnic and national terms exclusively, but also as arenas of intersection of global political and cultural flows. This approach allows the team to review critically the colonial-era concepts of ‘the Caucasus’, ‘Central Asia’, ‘the Russian near abroad’ and ‘the Turkic world’, and to test the theoretical potentialities of de-colonial geo-cultural affiliations such as SWANA (‘Southwest Asia and North Africa’).

• DFG-Verfahren: Sachbeihilfen
• Internationaler Bezug: Großbritannien
• Partnerorganisation: Arts and Humanities Research Council
• Kooperationspartner: Professor Dr. Vlad Strukov