This talk focuses on the rituals and traditions of the peoples of the Northwestern and Central Caucasus, based on the results of field expeditions conducted in the fall of 2018, spring of 2020, and spring of 2022. These studies were…
Academic Discussion Series (WiP)
Works-in-Progress (WiP) is an ongoing academic discussion series based in Tbilisi, Georgia, that takes place at the new office of CRRC at Chkhikvadze St. 1. It is co-organized by the Caucasus Research Resource Centers (CRRC), the American Councils for International Education: ACTR/ACCELS, and the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC). All of the talks are free and open to the public.
The purpose of the WiP series is to provide support and productive criticism to those researching and developing academic projects pertaining the Caucasus region.
If you would like to present at one of the W-i-P sessions, please contact: mariam.kobaladze@crrccenters.org
The essence of the Soviet economy is one of the central issues in contemporary historiography. Even if scholars do not address this problem directly, they still engage in the debates by using certain terminology to define the Soviet economy. The…
How does national identity develop? Identity development has long been a focus of political scientists, historians, and sociologists. Despite such prominent attention given, the topic persists as questions over nationhood and national identity formation continue to be illusive. Paralleling this…
Despite the rich scholarship on Muslim realms of the Russian empire and Russian imperial politics towards Islam published in recent decades, only a few works have focused on the South Caucasus. This talk will specifically discuss the lives and trans-imperial…
In 1967, the Soviet People’s Ministry of Merchant Marine decided to decentralize the merchant fleet and give every coastal republic its own ministry and maritime infrastructure. This was the birth of a Soviet success story, as within less than 10…
The relations among the former union republics of the USSR is a main discussion topic in international relations, but this cannot not be understood without its history as a domestic relationship within the USSR. In this study, Mitsuru Hobara analyzes…
The piece argues that the creeping authoritarianism manifest today in the political, civic, media-information and arts-cultural spheres under Georgian Dream is also taking place in the academic sphere, albeit ‘under the radar’. This subtle shift is part of a general…
How has Freedom Square gone so spectacularly wrong? The message of Tbilisi’s main square seems to be that citizenship does not matter. The square conveys this through a bombastic central column; with Saint George on top, who on closer inspection…
