February 2025 Cuties: Exploring Blurred Boundaries Between Puppets and Children in Kazakhstani Culture Barker, Meghanne. 2024. Throw Your Voice: Suspended Animations in Kazakhstani Childhoods. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. A dog named Kashtanka finds herself lost and alone. Her master, a carpenter, has taken her out but wandered off. A new master takes her in, feeds her, and teaches her to perform. She is well-fed but becomes bored in this new life, restricted to a single room and an endless routine. Then, one night, the gander who lives with her dies suddenly. She replaces him in the master’s act in the circus. At her debut, her first master is in the audience. He calls out to her, and she jumps back into his arms. She returns to her first home. This story, penned by Russian writer Anton Chekhov more than a century ago, acts as a structural thread to anchor an ethnography of two state-run institutions in Kazakhstan: a puppet theatre and a temporary home for children under seven. The Almaty State Puppet Theatre, in preparing a stage adaptation of Kashtanka, works to attract new audiences to puppetry through new techniques of animation. Hope House, a home where parents place children for one to seven years, is much like the second home of the new master: it provides nourishment and warmth, but it also relies on children to perform. Government and nongovernment sponsors frequently visit, and children put on costumes to sing and dance for these benefactors. At the same time, children are taught always … Continue reading Spotlight on Scholarship