Ulaanbaatar
University of California in Berkeley starts to teach Mongolian language
PoliticsUlaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ On occasion of the revival of Mongolian language program and the Center for Mongolian Studies at UC Berkeley, “the Mongolia celebration” event was organized this September 26 by the Mongolia Foundation and the Institute of East Asian Studies of University of California Berkeley, with a support of the Consulate General of Mongolia in San Francisco, USA.
UC Berkeley was a leading center for Mongolian Studies in the USA with a Mongolian language teaching during 1935-1996. In September of 2015, UC Berkeley resumed the Mongolian language class, after 19 years. The revival of the studies at UC Berkeley, listed among the World Top 10 Universities, has opened a new historic page of Mongolian Studies in the USA. The Government of Mongolia provided a certain amount of financial support for the revival of Mongolian language program at UC Berkeley.
As the first part of the event, the conference "Archeology of Knowledge: New Archival and Material Discoveries in Mongolia" ran at which keynote speech was given by D.Zayabaatar, National Committee for Mongolian Studies. Recent research findings related to archaeological and archival discoveries were presented by Dr O.Batsaikhan, Academy of Science of Mongolia; Dr D.Erdenebaatar, Ulaanbaatar City College; Dr Erdenebat, the Mongolian State University; Dr Ts.Uranchimeg, UC Berkeley; B.Jargalan, Ph.D candidate from Yale University; Naran Faulkner, Independent Scholar, also by Patricia Berger, History of Art, UC Berkeley; Brian Baumann, Center for Mongolian Studies, UC Berkeley; Christopher Atwood, Central Eurasian Studies, Indiana University; Vesna Wallace, Religious Studies, UC Santa Barbara; Matthew King, Religious Studies, UC Riverside.
After the conference, there was a fundraising dinner with Mongolian traditional cuisine, music and dance performance by Bay Area’s Ger Youth Center. The donations from tickets will be used for cataloging Mongolian books kept more than 50 years in UC Berkeley library, and publication of Mongolian language textbooks.
