The American Center for Mongolian Studies (ACMS) is currently accepting applications for the position of Director of Institutional Relations for its Ulaanbaatar Office. The position is open to Mongolian citizens with a strong academic background and English language capabilities.

The ACMS is a non-profit, non-governmental educational organization that supports the development of Mongolian Studies and academic exchanges with Inner Asia. The ACMS represents a consortium of over 35 academic institutions in North America and Mongolia, and is a member of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC).

The ACMS Director of Institutional Relations will be responsible for representing the ACMS in negotiations with Mongolian government ministries and city agencies, university officials, business and legal entities, and NGOs to carry out the organization’s strategic initiatives. The Director of Institutional Relations will report to the ACMS Resident Director, and will join a strong team of employees in the ACMS Ulaanbaatar office.  

The American Center for Mongolian Studies (ACMS) invites researchers and scholars to present public lectures during the ACMS Spring 2010 Speaker Series. If you are planning to visit Mongolia between February and June 2010 to conduct research or study, please contact info@mongoliacenter.org to schedule a date to participate in this public lecture series. The lectures must be conducted in English, and all academic disciplines are welcome. The Speaker Series is a great opportunity for scholars to present their work and for the general public to learn about academic research in Mongolia. Please notify the ACMS at least two weeks prior to your proposed date to speak in order to allow enough time to advertise the lecture. For more information about past lectures, please visit http://www.mongoliacenter.org/ss.

The Inner Mongolian Dance, Andai, as Dance Therapy

March 25th, 2010, 5pm, Lecture Hall 407, Building No.5 NUM

Mongolian shamanism deals to a great extent with healing and the fixing of community ills or personal wrongs as well as the relationship of humankind to the natural world and its spirits. Drumming, playing the aman khuur, singing, and dancing may be part of a ritual or a healing session. The Inner Mongolian dance, andai, is a dance derived from shamanism, which began as a method of treating a "heavy disease" among young women. Dance therapy consists of fairly recent western therapies which use dance and movement for healing purposes. Dance therapy also incorporates recent scientific knowledge about the brain and its role in healing, which may have some usefulness in describing what happens in andai. Some approaches to dance therapy also look at the spiritual aspects of dance and healing and this is another area where it and Mongolian shamanic dance may intersect. In this paper, I will examine the dance andai in terms of its connection to dance therapy to discover what properties may contribute to its effectiveness in healing.

Catherine Kmita is an ACMS Research Fellow and doctoral candidate in Anthropology at the University of Alberta. Her Master’s research combined Dance, Anthropology, and Asian Studies, to explore the Inner Mongolian dance, andai, through the lens of shamanic dance. Now she is looking at therapeutic aspects of shamanic dance in Buryatia, Mongolia, and Inner Mongolia by focusing on political interactions, the dance community, religious practices, and medical practices. 

Speech Perception in Khalkha Mongolian: A Psycholinguistic Survey

April 1st, 2010 5pm, Lecture Hall 407, Building No.5 NUM

Amy LaCross will present the results of her most recent Mongolian psycholinguistic experiment, which identifies, for the first time, an effect of word frequency in Mongolian word perception. This experiment is part of her larger research project which explores how regularity within language may affect the ways in which language speakers perceive and mentally process language. In addition, a brief overview of the field of psycholinguistics and its relevance to Mongolian studies will be included.

Amy LaCross is a PhD candidate in the Linguistics Department at the University of Arizona. She is currently a Fellow of the American Center for Mongolian Studies and is in Mongolia to conduct fieldwork for her dissertation. Her research focuses on phonology and sycholinguistics, with a particular focus on vowel harmonic languages, speech perception and lexical organization.