About Dan Waugh

In order to evaluate the quality of the information on web pages, it is helpful to know something about the source.  Here is Dan Waugh's resume primarily insofar as it relates to his experience in and knowledge of matters Central Asian.

Employment:  Professor of History, International Studies and Slavic and East European Languages and Literature, University of Washington (Seattle)

Education:  B.A., Yale, 1963 (Physics); A.M., Harvard, 1965 (Regional Studies--Soviet Union); Ph.D., Harvard, 1972 (History; main field Medieval and Early Modern Russia; field in Ottoman History)

Languages other than English:  fluent Russian; reading in German, French and some other European languages; smattering of Turkic languages.

Relevant Travel: 

  • 1969            Uzbekistan:   Tashkent, Samarkand, Bukhara; Armenia; Georgia
  • 1979            Tour lecturer for Society Expeditions:  Uzbekistan--Tashkent, Samarkand, Khiva; Mongolia
  • 1991            Kyrgyzstan:   climb on Peak Lenin; Tajikistan:  hiking in Iagnob area; Uzbekistan:   Tashkent, Samarkand, Shahr-i Sabs
  • 1993            Caucasus:   led climbs of Mt. Elbrus for REI Adventures; hiking in nearby mountains
  • 1994            Expedition to Gasherbrum II (8000 m. peak in Karakoram, Pakistan)
  • 1995            Led trek for REI in Pamir-Alai region of Kyrgyzstan; led REI mountain bike trip through Kyrgyzstan, across the Torugart Pass to Kashgar, and down the Karakoram Highway to Gilgit in Pakistan.
  • 1996            Led trek for REI in Pamir-Alai region of Kyrgyzstan; solo trek in Kongur/Mustagh Ata region S. of Kashgar in Xinjiang; climb of Mustagh Ata (24,750 ft.)
  • 1998            China, including month at Dunhuang studying Buddhist art at the Mogao caves
  • 1999            Led trek for Mt. Travel/Sobek in Pamir Alai region of Kyrgyzstan; also independent trekking there; climb on Khan Tengri in Tien Shan
  • 2001           Trekking in Ladakh (northern India).
  • 2004            Lectured for American Museum of Natural History Discovery Expeditions tour on eastern end of Trans-Siberian Railway, travelling from Vladivostok to Irkutsk in Russia and then down to Ulaan Baatar in Mongolia.
  • 2005 (projected)            Lecturing for archaeological dig in Mongolia, sponsored by the Silkroad Foundation.

    • Courses Taught:  The Mongols; Russia and Asia; The Silk Road (to see syllabus, click here); The Great Game.

    Publications and Research Projects:

  • Short notices/reviews of Soviet publications on Central Asia, in Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, 17/2 (1983), 18/1 (1984), 19/1 and 19/2 (1985), 21/1 (1987).
  • "Is There a Future for CD-ROMs?" REECAS Newsletter (Russian East European, and Central Asian Studies Center, University of Washington), Fall, 1997. Includes review of The Silk Road:  Digital Journey (DNA Multimedia, 1995).
  • "Exploring the 'Kongur Alps.'  Unknown Side of Mustagh Ata,"  The Himalayan Journal, 54 (1998), pp. 25-32; four photographs.  Account of 1996 solo trek in Kongur/Mustagh Ata region.
  • "In the Footsteps of Xuanzang,"  REECAS Newsletter , Fall, 1998, pp. 1, 5-6.  Account of 1998 summer in China.
  • Co-editor (with M. Holt Ruffin), Civil Society in Central Asia (Seattle:   University of Washington Press, 1999).  Papers from a conference jointly sponsored by the Center for Civil Society International and the Johns Hopkins Central Asia-Caucasus Institute; also, an annotated guide to Central Asian NGOs.
  • "Central Asia After Eight Years of Independence,"REECAS Newsletter, Fall 1999, pp. 1, 3-5. Note:  You need Adobe Acrobat 4.0 or higher to read this.  It can be downloaded via a link to the REECAS site.
  • "The 'Mysterious and Terrible Karatash Gorges':  Notes and Documents on the Explorations by Stein and Skrine," The Geographical Journal (Royal Geographical Society), vol. 165, No. 3 (November 1999), pp. 306-320.  Juxtaposes accounts by Aurel Stein and Clarmont Skrine with 1996 observations of Karatash River region near Kongur and Mustagh Ata; includes 7 photographs. Uses unpublished material in Bodleian Library (Oxford), the British Library Oriental and India Office Collections and the photo archive of the Royal Geographic Society, London.
  • "The Challenges of Learning about the Silk Road," REECAS Newsletter, Winter 2000.  Review of Susan Whitfield, Life along the Silk Road; Richard C. Foltz, Religions of the Silk Road; Ian Gillman and Hans-Joachim Klimkeit, Christians in Asia before 1500.
  • "The Pax Mongolica."   A brief interpretation of the impact of the Mongol Empire.
  • Travelers on the Silk Road. (Jointly authored with Adela Lee of the Silk-Road Foundation.)  An ongoing project to provide basic reference material on history travel in Inner Asia.  to date, there are some 45 entries.
  • A Sven Hedin Bibliography. An extensive annotated bibliography of the writings of the famous Swedish explorer Sven Hedin and select works about him.
  • A brief Sven Hedin Chronology.
  • review of: Thomas T. Allsen, Commodity and exchange in the Mongol empire: A cultural history of Islamic textiles, in Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies (Amman, Jordan), 2/1: 196-198. (also posted on my web site: http://faculty.washington.edu/dwaugh/CA/alls-rev.html)..
  • (contributor and de facto co-editor), Vagabond Life: The Caucasus Journals of George Kennan, Edited, with an Introduction and Afterword, by Frith Maier, With Contributions by Daniel C. Waugh (Seattle: UW Press), 266 pp.
  • "The Authoritarian Politics of Central Asia," in The Democratic Process: Promises and Challenges. A resource guide produced for the Democracy Education Exchange Project (DEEP) (American Forum for Global Education), pp. 37-53. (The book is available on-line in pdf format at: http://www.globaled.org/DemProcess.pdf).
  • "The Physical and Human Geography of Inner Asia in the Early 1920s Through the Eyes and Lens of C. P. Skrine," in Cultural Interaction and Conflict in Central and Inner Asia. Papers presented at the Central and Inner Asia Seminar University of Toronto, 3-4 May 2002 and 23-24 May 2003 (=Toronto Studies in Central and Inner Asia, No. 6) (Toronto: Asian Institute, University of Toronto, 2004): 87-100.
  • Photographs, published in several locations, including Cities/Buildings web archive.  For further information, click here.
  • Ongoing editorial obligations include: Editor of Educational Resources Section, Central Eurasian Studies Review (journal of the Central Eurasian Studies Society), online at: http://cess.fas.harvard.edu/cesr/; editor, The Silk Road (newsletter of the Silkroad Foundation), online at http://www.silkroadfoundation.org.
  • Project director for Silk Road Seattle, an online collection of educational resources. I have written a variety of web pages for this site and posted ther many of my photos of Central Asia. See a selection of the links to my personal contributions at: "The Silk Road--Materials for an e-history."
  • "The Making of Chinese Central Asia."  Unpublished conference paper about C. P. Skrine's well-known 1926 book on western Xinjiang.
  • "Etherton at Kashgar:  Anti-Bolshevik Hero or Unprincipled Scoundrel?"   Unpublished conference paper about Skrine's predecessor as British Consul in Kashgar.
  • The two papers just listed are part of a current project, an book-length edition of C. P. Skrine's unpublished correspondence and photographs, based on his materials in the British Library Oriental and India Office Collections and the photographic archive of the Royal Geographic Society.  Estimated completion date, 2005. For an overview of this project, see: "C. P. Skrine in Kashgaria," Central Eurasian Studies Review, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 13-15 (on-line at: http://cess.fas.harvard.edu/cesr/pdf/CESR_02_3.pdf).
  • "Virtual and Visual Reality:  Cosmic Space in the Mogao Caves," unpublished paper (115 pp.)

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    For a fuller academic CV including bibliography of my Russia-related publications, click here.

    Last revised January 20, 2005.