“Modern Mongolia: Heritage and Tradition Amid Changing Realities”

June 6 - July 1, 2016, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

Project Faculty and Staff

This project will be co-directed by David Dettmann, US Director of the ACMS, and Academic Lead Morris Rossabi, Distinguished Professor of History, City University of New York and Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University. Rossabi’s books include The Mongols and Global History, Modern Mongolia: From Khans to Commissars to Capitalists, and Khubilai Khan: His Life and Times. Rossabi was Academic Lead Scholar for the 2014 NEH Summer Institute The Mongols and the Eurasian Nexus of Global History. As a former Director of the Board of Trustees of the Arts and Culture Board of the Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation), he has extensive contacts with the Arts Council of Mongolia and will coordinate with the Council to invite Mongolian artists and performers who might be traveling to the U.S. to the Institute. David Dettmann is an experienced professional in promoting Asian Area Studies educational outreach with past positions as Director of Outreach at the Center for East Asian Studies at University of Wisconsin-Madison (from 2009-2013), and at the Center for East Asian Studies at University of Pennsylvania (interim, Spring 2014). He is currently US Director for the ACMS.

Visiting scholars will include: Dr. Christopher P. Atwood, Associate Professor of Central Eurasian History at Indiana University-Bloomington and author of Young Mongols and Vigilantes in Inner Mongolia Interregnum Decades, 1911-1931 (2002) and Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire (2004); Dr. Pamela Crossley, Collis Professor of History, Dartmouth College and author of The Manchus (2002), and the forthcoming Intercession: The Nomadic Courts of Eurasia and the Origins of the Early Modern World (2015); Dr. William Fitzhugh, Curator of Archaeology and Director, Arctic Studies Center of the Smithsonian Institution and co-author of Genghis Khan & The Mongol Empire (2013); Dr. Elizabet Endicott, Professor Emerita of History at Middlebury College and author of A History of Land Use in Mongolia: The Thirteenth Century to the Present (2013); Dr. Charles Krusekopf, Executive Director of the American Center for Mongolian Studies, and Project Director of the ACMS/Luce Foundation Mongolia Cultural Heritage Initiative. He is also Director and Associate Professor at Royal Roads University School of Business; Dr. Clyde Goulden, Curator and Professor Emeritus at Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University and co-editor of The Geology, Biodiversity, and Ecology of Lake Hövsgöl (Mongolia) (2006); Dr. Nancy Steinhardt, Professor of East Asian Art at University of Pennsylvania and author of Chinese Archaeology in an Age of Turmoil (2015); Dr. Johan Elverskog, Professor and Chair of Religious Studies at Southern Methodist University and author of Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road (2010); Dr. Susan Witte, Associate Professor of Social Work at Columbia University; and Dr. Peter K. Marsh, Associate Professor of Music at California State University East Bay and author of The Horse-head Fiddle and the Cosmopolitan Reimagination of Tradition in Mongolia (2014).

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.