Email:

wfierman@indiana.edu

Department:

Emeriti Faculty

Campus:

IU Bloomington

Education

Ph.D., Havard University, 1979

Current Doctoral Students

• Blake Puckett

Research Interests

politics of Central Asia, especially policies affecting language, Islam, and state identities.

Courses Recently Taught

• U519 - Soviet and Post-Soviet Nationality Problems
• U596 - Post-Soviet Transition in Central Asia
• U597 - Politics and Society in Central Asia

Publication Highlights

Language Planning and National Development:  The Uzbek Experience (Mouton Press, 1991)

Edited Book:

Soviet Central Asia:  The Failed Transformation (Westview Press, 1991)

Editor of Journal Special Issue

"Implementing Language Laws:  Perestroika and its Legacy in Five Republics: Nationalities Papers, XXIII, No. 3 (1995), pp 505-659

Scholarly articles and book chapters:

"Perceptions of Threats from 'Alien Faiths:" An Analysis of Reactions in the Kazakh-Language Press," in Andrea Strasser et al. (eds.) Central Asia and Islam, Hamburg: Deutsches Orient-Institut (2002), pp 159-171

"Changing Urban Demography and the Prospects of Nationalism in Kazakhstan," Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism, XXVII, Nos. 1-2 (2000), 7-20

Language and Identity in Kazakhstan:  Formulations in Policy Documents, 1987-1997," Communist and Post-Communist Studies, XXX, No. 2 (1998), 1771-186

"Political Development in Uzbekistan:  Democratization?" in Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrott (eds.)Conflict, Cleabage and Change in Central Asia and the Caucasus (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp 360-408

Current Research Projects

• language politics and problems in Kazakhstan.