Alexa Kurmanov is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at UC Berkeley. Their research integrates anthropology, Black Studies, and Central Asian Studies and provides an interdisciplinary analysis of trans communities in Kyrgyzstan and the Kyrgyz diaspora. Their dissertation analyzes Kyrgyz trans life in the wake of Russian imperialism and Soviet modernization, focusing on palimpsestic material and ideological remains within law, medicine, and regimes of documentation. These institutional structures, alongside national discourses of gender and nationality, often portray the intersection of trans and Kyrgyz subjectivity as incompatible. Putting in dialogue Christina Sharpe’s concept of the wake and Ann Stoler’s notion of duress, this project demonstrates how Kyrgyz trans life is conditioned by local and transnational “partial inscriptions” of empire historically underpinned by anti-Blackness. Through the lens of the wake, their project maps how the afterlives of empire and socialism persist within the transition to neoliberalism, ultimately revealing the region's entanglement with global regimes of anti-Blackness, and opens new ways to situate trans masculine, trans feminine, and nonbinary Kyrgyz experiences beyond national borders, integrating them into global discourses of racial capitalism, global structures of white supremacy and global anti-Blackness. Portions of Alexa’s research have been published in Central Asian Survey, Slavic Review and the edited volume Researching Central Asia: Navigating Positionality in the Field.
Department and Institution:
Anthropology, UC Berkeley
Bio/CV:
