Session:
Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
Kağan Arık has 25 years’ experience in language pedagogy for modern Turkish language and literature and is interested in the historical development of the Turkic languages. As an anthropologist of Central Asia since 1987, Arık has investigated pre-Islamic elements in the culture of the Turkic peoples of Central Asia and Turkey. He has published works about the culture of the Kazak nomads in China, the oral literature of the Kirghiz, and on traditional healing among the Turkic peoples. Arık is the Ayaslı Associate Professor of Instruction in Modern Turkish and Turkic languages and coordinator for the Modern Turkish language program at the University of Chicago.