Learning Outcomes

MACAS trains students to critically analyze the fields of knowledge that have informed studies of Central Asia, to identify the biases and limitations that shape these fields, and to understand the ways in which specific fields create, restrict, and produce knowledge of Central Asia.

MACAS students acquire skills that allow them to assess primary sources or raw research data,   to evaluate the sources they use for analysis, to  make inferences, to establish relations between varied sources, to identify limitations and biases, and determine reliability.

MACAS students are taught to review, understand, and evaluate scholarly arguments within a specific field. They are repeatedly required to survey scholarship on contested issues and then provide an organized, critical overview (this can involve contrasting competing arguments or might encompass a chronological overview of how a specific scholarly argument has developed).

MACAS courses encourage students to engage the complexities of identities in Central Asia, to come to terms with the idea that ethnicity is something fluid rather than fixed – a marker of identity comprised of diverse elements and that is subject to continual manipulations, shifts, and changes.