While Kamyar is traveling for work, Rustin is joined by guest co-host Yan Matusevich in Tbilisi, Georgia. Yan is a Vienna-based researcher and journalist focusing on issues of migration in the post-Soviet space. He is also the host of the [ZamZaman](https://cba.fro.at/series/zamzaman) podcast, which showcases music from Eastern Europe and Eurasia at large. Yan and Rustin talk to Mariana Irby, a PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses on nationalism, gender, and post-socialism in Tajikistan and Tajik migrant communities in Russia. She is also the author of a recent Ajam article, ["Dressing the Nation: Tajikistan’s Hijab Ban and the Politics of Fashion in Post-Soviet Central Asia" ](https://ajammc.com/2018/09/30/national-islamic-fashion-tajikistan/). In this episode, Mariana delves deeper into the interplay between gender, articulations of nationhood, and the Tajik labor economy. Yan closes out the episode with a track from the ZamZaman archive: ["Dilro Bubin," Makhfirat Hamroqulova & Gulshan (Tajikistan, 1985) ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT0122kn6fQ&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR3m8n3d2oNh27w5S61YH8EZOxjmndOPHPRgLMv-oUht08D4erh6wLPOn_8) Related Readings: Madeleine Reeves, "[Clean fake:Authenticating documents and persons in migrant Moscow"](http://http://russianmodernisation.fi/material/living-with-risk/Further_readings_Aitamurto2.pdf) Nicholas Muller, ["Russia: New migrant registration rules threaten tenuous livelihoods"](https://eurasianet.org/russia-new-migrant-registration-rules-threaten-tenuous-livelihoods) ...
In this episode, Kamyar and Rustin talk to Stefan Williamson Fa, co-founder of [Mountains of Tongues](https://www.facebook.com/mountainsoftongues/), a project documenting and promoting musical dialects in the South Caucasus. Mountains of Tongues showcases traditions that defy normal categorizations of "national" or "folk" music through the use of non-conventional instruments, multiple languages, and a blending of different musical genres. Stefan shares three songs from the Mountains of Tongues archive and from his most recent fieldwork in Georgia: a Georgian-Azeri bilingual Kamancha song by Sergo Kamalov, Aşıq Nargile's rendition of the Aşıq Qərib story, and a Azeri electric guitar solo from a wedding in Qaçağan, Georgia. Stefan Williamson Fa recently received his PhD in Anthropology at University College London. His research focuses on performance and lamentation rituals in Turkish-speaking Shi'i communities in Eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus. ...
Central Asianists rejoice! In this episode, Rustin speaks with Scott Levi, Professor and Chair of History at Ohio State University. He is the author of [The Rise and Fall of Khoqand, 1709-1876: Central Asia in the Global Age (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017)](https://www.upress.pitt.edu/books/9780822965060/) Dr. Levi gives an overview of the history of the Khoqand Khanate, a dynastic polity centered around the Ferghana Valley in the heart of Central Asia. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Uzbek Ming rulers extended their rule across and beyond the fertile valley, establishing important political and economic linkages with Imperial China, Russia, and the Indian Subcontinent. Throughout the discussion, Dr. Levi stresses the importance of "connected history" and highlights how globalizing forces, environmental changes, and demographic shifts brought about the rise and fall of the Khoqand Khanate. Rustin closes out the episode with one of his favorite Soviet-era Uzbek songs, [Bugmacha Bilagim by Rano Sabirova (1979)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awdWWNpqGio) ...
