EALC welcomes Dr. Gülnar Eziz as the department’s new Preceptor in Uyghur and Chaghatay. Dr. Eziz earned her Ph.D. in Linguistic Anthropology at The University of Kansas and served there as a Research and Teaching Assistant in Uyghur and Chaghatay. Prior to her arrival in the U.S, she studied at Xinjiang University, where she earned both her B.A and her M.A. degrees and published multiple peer-reviewed essays on Uyghur language and linguistics.
Uyghur is a Turkic language with 10 to 15 million speakers, spoken primarily by the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western China, but also in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan and other countries with Uyghur-speaking expatriate communities.
Chaghatay, the classical antecedent of modern Uzbek and modern Uyghur, was the common literary language of the Central Asian Turks from the 14th to the early 20th century. It is still studied in modern Turkey and regarded as part of the Turkic heritage. It is written in Perso-Arabic script.
Dr. Eziz will teach both elementary and intermediate Uyghur and Chaghatay to undergrad and graduate students studying Inner Asia.