1. Demonstrate a comprehensive knowledge of modern Central Asian history and/or an appreciation of how significant themes in the region’s recent past manifest themselves in its contemporary form.
Knowledge & Understanding

2. Understand major points of commonality and contention in the historiography of modern Central Asia, and build and sustain original arguments which engage with these in a rigorous and nuanced manner.
Analysis

3. Empathise effectively with historical agents (citizens and decision-makers) associated with Central Asia at key moments in twentieth and twenty-first century history.
Application

4. Communicate well-informed arguments about modern Central Asia with precision and flare. Communication

Assessment One: Research Paper
1,000 words, 20%
Learning Objectives 2 and 4
In this assignment, to be successful, students will need to engage thoroughly with a disagreement or disparity in the work of two or more historians. This will improve their critical thinking skills and their ability to perceive differences in argumentation in the historiography. These are skills they will then have to demonstrate again in essays two and three, meaning that the trajectory of their academic development should be clear across the three submissions.

Assessment Two: Essay ONE
2,500 words, 35%
Learning objectives 1, 2 and 4
This essay assignment asks students to respond to one of a series of questions relating to the history of Central Asia. As well as demonstrating a refined aptitude for interpretation and analysis, students will need to show their extensive knowledge of their topic.

Assessment Three: Essay TWO
2,500 words, 35%
All learning objectives
This final formal assessment will bring together the key areas of focus in the preceding two assessments (analytical rigour and extensive knowledge) and add a final point of emphasis: an appreciation for the strategic challenges posed to Central Asian decision-makers today and in the recent past. Students will do this by bringing Central Asia’s history into dialogue with its present and analyse extant consistencies and inconsistencies across periods.

Assessment Four: Participation
Word Count N/A, 10%
All learning objectives
Students will be assessed for the level and quality of their contributions to the discussion board forums on Blackboard. This ensures engagement throughout the module, interaction with their peers, and an ability to sustain a dialogue about academic matters in a style and tone that is appropriate at PG level. As in all three preceding assessments, the students’ ability to express themselves effectively in writing will be considered carefully.

Despite its enormous importance and inexhaustible capacity to fascinate, Central Asia remains one of the most poorly understood regions of the world. Easily caricatured as a crossroads, a venue for competition or the playing board for some ‘Great Game’, the five Central Asian states and their inhabitants are seldom given the attention they deserve nor attributed with the agency and dynamism they exhibit. This module seeks to rectify this series of oversights and, in so doing, it enables students to better understand Central Asia, the contemporary world in which it finds itself, and the contemporary international relations practised by and with the five Central Asian states.

The module begins in the Medieval period when the political and social structures of Central Asia were among the most powerful and influential in the world. Students will find cultures and communities which dominated China in the east and Christendom in the west. Rapidly, the module moves on to discuss the region’s reversal of fortunes, its annexation by St Petersburg and its experience of modern European colonialism. The module will then dwell on Central Asia's singular experience in the Soviet period, during which time the political structures still recognisable today were first established. The module pauses to consider the post-Soviet period of Cental Asian history, before asking students to connect Central Asia's recent past to its present and immediate future. Salient themes will include imperialism and colonialism, modernisation, authoritarianism, religiosity, industrialisation, nationalism, neo-traditionalism, nomadism, tribalism, patriarchy and dependency theory.

Central Asia, and its role as a venue for competition between the great powers of China, the US and Russia, is hugely topical and deeply contentious at this moment, and this module is specifically designed to help students understand the subject more deeply.

In this module, you should be doing five things in each week of the semester:

1. Review the relevant weekly lecture notes provided by the tutor

2. Read the relevant weekly essential reading in full, as outlined online. This is ordinarily a single book chapter or journal article, perhaps two, which can be found under the ‘Reading List’ tab.

3. Supplement this with wider reading relevant to the weekly topic. This should partly come from the relevant week’s folder in the ‘Learning Materials’ tab, and partly from your own independent literature search, an essential component of all postgraduate study.

4. Contribute to the relevant weekly discussion on the Blackboard site, including making your own post and replying to the posts of others on the module.

5. Plan for, prepare for or write one of your three items of formal assessed work (that is: Essay ONE, the Critical Review, and Essay TWO).

Feedback will come in four primary forms: contributions from your tutor and your peers on the Blackboard discussion board, the Weekly Appraisal audio files, comments on any essay plans or questions you send to your tutor via email, and the formal feedback submitted in response to each of your pieces of assessment. Please take time to absorb feedback and act on its implications.

Jones, P. (2017) Islam, Society, and Politics in Central Asia, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press
Martin, T. (2001) The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939
Khodarkovsky, M. (2004) Russia’s Steppe Frontier: The Making of a Colonial Empire 1500-1800
Patnaik, A. (2016) Central Asia: Geopolitics, Security and Stability, London: Routledge
Soucek, S. (2000) A History of Inner Asia
Suny, R. G. (2010) The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the USSR and the Successor States, 2nd edition
Thomas, A. (2018) Nomads and Soviet Rule: Central Asia under Lenin and Stalin, London: I.B. Tauris

A KeyLinks page of online historiography will be required by students studying on this module.