Tuva

[eric r laursen]

I'm posting this for a student here at the University of Utah.  Please reply directly to him (see e-mail below):



Hello,


My name is Alex Ortega, and I’m interested in going to the Tuva Republic, which is an autonomous subject of the Russian Federation. Although this is a Slavic message board, I want to visit Tuva to learn Tuvan throat singing (höömeï).


The initial idea I had to execute this pursuit was to apply for a Fulbright Scholarship. About six months ago, I began researching the application process for a Fulbright Scholarship in the Russian Federation. When I found the requirements, one was that the applicant must have at least one year's experience of the language of the host country. That's where I wondered if I needed to learn Russian or if I needed to learn Tuvan.


I emailed a person who is seemingly some sort of applicant coordinator for Fulbright Scholarships, and she—quite brusquely and somewhat rudely—just said that the time to apply had ended, even though I clearly stated in my email that, in order to apply for a FUTURE scholarship that might be available, I wanted to know if I needed to learn Tuvan, which is the indigenous language in the autonomous republic, undoubtedly, or if I needed learn Russian, which would be the lingua franca, I would assume. I replied to a another person to whom she referred me to restate what I was asking, but she never returned my message.


So, my first question is: If I applied for a Fulbright Scholarship for this endeavor, should I study Russian, Tuvan (how?) or both? Second: If I needed to study Tuvan, how would I do that?


The next part of this quandary follows: The prestige and convenience of obtaining a Fulbright Scholarship sounds great, however, my main aim is to get to Tuva and study höömeï in a productive way, whether it be through the lens of über-academic writing (stakes, claims, purpose, conceptual aims, etc.) or through music or in whatever way there exists. Does anybody know of any other possible avenues to make this happen?


If you have any information or leads, please email me at alexander.r.ortega at gmail.com<mailto:alexander.r.ortega at gmail.com>.


Thanks,

Alex





Dr. Eric Laursen
Associate Professor, Russian and Comparative Literary & Cultural Studies
Department of Languages and Literatures
University of Utah
255 So Central Campus Drive
Salt Lake City, Utah 84112
eric.laursen at utah.edu
http://utah.academia.edu/EricLaursen


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