Prizes for Veiled Empire: Gender and Power in Stalinist Central Asia (Book)

W. Bruce Lincoln Prize [link]
Date: 11/1/2006 12:00:00 AM
Organization: American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies [link]
Abstract: Douglas Northrop's Veiled Empire is a book remarkable in its interdisciplinary and thematic breadth. Northrop uses the hujum—the Soviet government's campaign against female veiling in Uzbekistan from the 1920s through the 1930s— as the entryway to a complex analysis of the dynamics of nation building in the early Soviet state. Northrop explores how party ideologues struggled to define distinguishing traits of national and ethnic identity in the fluid situation of Central Asia, and finally made veiling a marker for Uzbek identity, despite the ubiquity of veiling practices across the region. He chronicles debates between central and local authorities about the attempt to fit Uzbek culture into a class-based formula of identity; he tracks how the Party pragmatically utilized categories of gender and ethnicity to forge Uzbek nationality. In its insistence on transforming daily life to conform to the norms of a presumed "superior" Russian civilization, Northrop argues, the

Heldt Prize [link]
Date: 11/1/2004 12:00:00 AM
Organization: Association for Women in Slavic Studies [link]
Abstract: Best book in Slavic/Eastern European/Eurasian women's studies

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