Laura Olson Osterman, Germanic & Slavic Languages & Literatures
Gender Performance in Public and Private Celebrations of Navruz in Contemporary Uzbekistan
I would like to request partial funding for a research trip to Uzbekistan, March 7-30, 2023. The trip is to perform ethnographic participant observation for the holiday Navruz. Navruz is a New Year’s celebration, known as the Persian New Year, celebrated around 21 March (today, it is celebrated in Uzbekistan most of the month of March). In Soviet Uzbekistan, the government banned the celebration of Navruz from the 1930s to the 1960s, since it was understood as a Muslim holiday. It was allowed again after Soviet ethnographers established that the holiday actually had pre-Islamic origins. In the 1980s, Navruz was again prohibited on the grounds that it involved Islamic worship. Once Uzbekistan gained independence in 1991, Navruz was reinstated and gained the status of an official national holiday. It has now dual purposes and functions: it supports nation-building with public mass spectacle (including theatrical and music and dance performances), and is also a grassroots holiday which men and women celebrate in somewhat separate spheres. During this holiday, in the Fergana valley men perform askiya, in which they try to best each other by reciting their own humorous satirical verses (like rap battles) in tea houses; elsewhere, they perform kurash, ritualized wrestling, in local clubs, and in Samarkand, they take part in the sport of buzkashi, horse polo.