2021 Citation Recipient

Moira O’Shea

The Beth Holmgren Graduate Student Essay Prize, established in 1990 and named in honor of Professor Holmgren in 2021, is awarded for an outstanding essay by a graduate student in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies.

Winner: Moira O’Shea
Title: “‘We Took the National Game and Turned It into a Sport:’ Playing Kok Boru and Re-Inventing Tradition in Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan,” University of Chicago

The Beth Holmgren Graduate Student Essay Prize committee awards the 2021 prize to Moira O’Shea from the University of Chicago for her essay “’We Took the National Game and Turned It into a Sport:’ Playing Kok Boru and Re-Inventing Tradition in Post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan.” The committee was impressed with O’Shea’s original research on the ancient Kyrgyz game, a team sport with the object of hurling a dead goat carcass from horseback into a goal, and her examination of how it has been re-invented in a global space. O’Shea’s paper is a well-researched ethnography that relies on extensive use of interviews with coaches, team owners, spectators as well as first-hand observations of tournaments. As a result, her essay incorporates illuminating citations, descriptions, and photographs. O’Shea frames the practice of kok boru as simultaneously traditional, that is, distinct, and modern, which is to say legible to outsiders, and she leads the reader through an interesting discussion of what makes games and sports as well as what makes a practice “civilized” and traditional. The committee members found O’Shea’s topic fascinating, just as we found her writing compelling and accessible. Her work brings new and exciting knowledge to the ASEEES community, and we look forward to seeing her future contributions to the field.