Usmon Boron

Postdoctoral Associate in Central Asian Studies; Lecturer in East Asian Studies

Council on East Asian Studies

Academic Year: 2025-26

Usmon Boron's research and teaching focus broadly on entanglements between Islam and secular modernity. His current book project, In the Shadow of Tradition: Soviet Secularism and Islamic Revival in Kyrgyzstan, examines the emergence of secularism in Soviet Central Asia and explores how Soviet secular categories continue to shape the lives of Central Asian Muslims today.

Drawing on life history, digital ethnography, and textual analysis, the book reveals overlooked affinities between Soviet and liberal secular modernities. It advances a broader understanding of secularism as both a mode of governance and a cultural formation that transcends the ideological divide between communism and liberalism. An article based on this project appeared in Comparative Studies in Society and History in April 2024.

Born and raised in Uzbekistan, Usmon received PhD from the University of Toronto. Before coming to Yale, he was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. Usmon’s work has been supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Global Religion Research Initiative, ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

230 Prospect Street, Room 204

usmon.boron@yale.edu

Courses

Islam and Communist Modernities in Central Asia and Xinjiang

EAST 4120, ANTH 4120

In the early 20th century, Central Asia and Xinjiang—two Muslim-majority regions with a shared history—fell under the rule of two communist states, the USSR and China. Both states facilitated the emergence of local nations while launching aggressive secularization policies aimed at suppressing local Islamic beliefs and practices. This course takes a comparative approach to the interwoven trajectories of Islam, nation-building, and secularization in Central Asia and Xinjiang. In so doing, it pursues two overarching objectives. The first is to trace the major historical events that have shaped these regions since the late 19th century. The second is to examine the main theoretical frameworks scholars have employed to better understand these historical transformations. Key conceptual questions explored in this course include: What is nationalism and how did Central Asian nations emerge? What is Islam as an object of scholarly inquiry? What is secularism, and how does it shape and regulate religion? How did Soviet and Chinese secularization campaigns transfigure Islam in Central Asia and Xinjiang? What forces facilitate the ongoing ethnocide of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang?

Seminar

Spring 2026

MW 1:00 PM - 2:15 PM