The Craft of Mending: A Symposium on the Cross-Cultural Heritage of Uzbekistan (from 6 to 8 October 2025)

The inaugural edition of the Bukhara Biennial Recipes for Broken Hearts aims to engage rich historical heritage of Bukhara with traditional Central Asian craft practices, as well as contemporary international artist community. 

Contemporary Uzbekistan is marked by an urgent conversation about cultural preservation. From historic architecture and museum collections to recipes, performance, and craft traditions, the question of how to sustain heritage is both cultural and political. The Craft of Mending explores how practices of upkeep, improvisation, and care can serve as critical tools for sustaining shared histories and imagining collective futures.

The symposium aims to position Uzbekistan as a site of rich transregional exchange, highlighting cultural continuities and innovations that traverse Central, East, and Southeast Asia, the broader Middle East and North Africa, and former Soviet territories.

All the panels will be available with simultaneous translation between English, Uzbek and Russian for all attendees.

October 6
10:00 – 10:15
Opening Remarks

12:10 – 13:00 
Urban Memory in Repair
Explores how cities remember and reinvent themselves, from re-used madrasa squares to reconstructed and mythologized landscapes of 19th-century Bukhara.

Speakers:

• Yue Xie, PhD Candidate, Harvard University
  Madrasa Squares: Reimagining and Reusing the Past in Early Modern Central Asia
• James Pickett, Associate Professor, University of Pittsburgh 
  Efflorescence before the Eclipse: The Reconstruction and Mythologization of Bukhara in the 19th Century

Moderator: Alexandra Dennett

15:15 – 16:30 
The Afterlives of Buildings
Traces how monuments and buildings shift in meaning through restoration, conservation, and everyday adaptation across different political eras.

Speakers:

• Anna Pronina, PhD Candidate, Central European University
  Monuments in Making: Materiality, Knowledge, and Labor in Restoration in Early Soviet Uzbekistan
• Dilrabo Tosheva, AKPIA Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University
  Architectural Conservation, Waqf Institution and Politics of Heritage: The Case of the Samanid Mausoleum in Bukhara
• Rosita Palladino, Adjunct Professor, Syracuse University
  Sum-Remont: Balconies Reclaimed, Repurposed, Redefined

Moderator: Leora Eisenberg

October 7
10:00 – 10:50
Tastes That Bind
Looks at food as a medium of connection and memory, from Soviet classifications of cuisine to travelers’ impressions of Central Asian taste.

Speakers:

• Aliya Bolatkhan, Doctoral Researcher, University of Zurich
  Rewriting Taste: Soviet Ethnography and the Politics of Food Naming
• Natasha Klimenko, Doctoral Fellow, Free University, Berlin
  “Eventually the Grapes Settle over Everything”: Impressions of Food in Travelogues on Central Asia

Moderator: Aziza Izamova

11:00 – 12:45 
Cultural Crossings
Explores artistic exchanges that have shaped Uzbek estrada.

Speakers:

• Carola Platzek, Independent Researcher
  Uzbek Cultural Heritage and the Work of Japanese Artist Hirayama Ikuo
• Leora Eisenberg, PhD Candidate, Harvard University
  How Uzbek is the Arabic Tango?: The Many Influences of Uzbek Estrada
• Sven Spieker, Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara
  Postscript to Empire

Moderator: Aziza Izamova

14:40 – 16:45
Memory of the Medium
Considers how photography, lyric poetry, and historical literature have preserved and reshaped memory across shifting regimes.

Speakers:

• Alexandra Dennett, PhD Candidate, Harvard University
  Crafting Memory: Photographers in Early Soviet Uzbekistan
• Claire Roosien, Assistant Professor, Yale University
  "Shards of Memory": Lyric Form as Mending
• Rebecca Selch, PhD Candidate, Harvard University
  Making Majālis al-ʿUshshāq in Bukhara: The Taste for a Timurid Taẕkīra in a Post-Timurid World
• Christianna Bonin, Assistant Professor, American University of Sharjah
  Forged Below: Metallurgical Histories and Spiritual Afterlives in Soviet Kazakhstan

Moderator: Albert Cavallaro

October 8
10:00 – 11:45 
Reimagining the Museum
Examines how museums in Central Asia mediate heritage, identity, and belief, focusing on changing practices of display and engagement.

Speakers:

• Zukhra Kasimova, Assistant Professor, Bucknell University
  National in Form, Hybrid in Content? Creation of a Savitsky Museum in Nukus
• Muzaffara Ishanova, PhD Student, National Institute of Fine Arts and Design, Tashkent
  Collaboration Activities of the Savitsky Museum
• Albert Cavallaro, PhD Candidate, University of Michigan
  Making the Museum Muslim: Or, the Rise of the Muslim Museum Visitor in Tashkent, 1898–1904

Moderator: Anna Pronina

12:00 – 13:15 
Embodied Practices of Care

Speakers:

• Anel Rakhimzhanova, PhD Candidate, NYU
  Almagul Menlibayeva: Crafting a Female Body in Central Asia
• Zhameli Khairli, Independent Researcher
  Pedals, Tools & Radical Care: Feminist Repair in a DIY Bike Workshop
• Diana Kudaibergenova, Assistant Professor, UCL
  The Art/Power in Central Asian Contemporary Culture

Moderator: Ekaterina Kulinicheva