Figures of Conflict: Nationalist & Intercultural Media in Tajikistan, 1991-2017

This dissertation addresses the tension between nationalism and interculturalism as expressed through dance and media produced in Tajikistan from 1991-2017. Theories of nationalism that have taken Europe as their primary model do not account for the position of Tajikistan, which gained independence from the USSR in 1991 after decades of Soviet nationbuilding. Tajik traditional dance is shown to reveal a paradox at the heart of contemporary Tajik ideas about gender -- a fault line between nostalgic and modern ideas about womanhood that is at once regressive and a thoroughly contemporary phenomenon. On the other hand, Tajik films produced during the Tajik Civil War (1992-1997) and documentaries of the independence era are multi-perspectival, often fragmented works. I argue that as a body of works they represent, not so much a "national" cinema tradition, as a new kind of third cinema that critiques neoliberal experience. Concern with borders -- political, social, and moral -- is a common theme among these films. Finally, this is a Practice as Research (PAR) dissertation that includes the featurelength documentary, After the Curtain, about women dancers struggling with the conservative gender shift taking place in contemporary Tajikistan. The dissertation concludes with a discussion of the ethical and aesthetic choices I made in the making of the film, with reference to the written research presented in the rest of this dissertation.