Central Asia Initiative: Mobility and Governability

At a time when Central Asia is of growing consequence to the global economy and security, the Asia Institute has launched an initiative to foster greater understanding of the history and the significance of Central and Inner Asia within the campus and broader academic communities and among the general public.

The organizing theme for this first year will be "Mobility and Governability." Highlighting the significance of Central Asia as a distinct geographic region which has been the site of repreated migrations and conquests from earliest times, this rubric encourages reflection on how the mobility of Central Asian peoples has allowed both for conquest within and outside Central Asia, and for the ungovernability that has faced occupiers from outside the region.

Activities:

March 13, 2008 Film screening: Little Angel, Make Me Happy, by Usman Saparaov (Turkmenistan, 1992)
May 14, 2008 Film screening: Koryo Saram - The Unreliable People, (2006), with co-director David Chung. Followed by a panel discussion on "Enforced Migration and Sedentarization in Modern Central Asia"
Summer 2008 Workshop for K-12 educators: Monks, Merchants and Millworkers: Connecting Europe and Asia in World Economic History
October 18, 2008 Day-long Symposium: Mobility and Governability in Central Asia
November 17, 2008 Panel Presentation: Afghan Society after the Taliban: The View from the Hills

Spring 2009: Third Annual China in Asia Workshop with University of Washington - "China and Its Neighbors: Central Asia"

Central Asia Initiative Steering Committee:

Nile Green, Professor of History, Committee Chair
Nancy Levine, Professor of Anthropology
Gregory Schopen, Professor of Asian Languages and Cultures
Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Director, Center for India and South Asia and Doshi Professor of History

David MacFadyen on "Little Angel, Make Me Happy"
In his introduction to Usman Saparov's film at the March 13, 2008 screening, David MacFadyen situates "Little Angel" in the context of the Soviet-era political climate and film culture of Turkmenistan in the 1970s to 1990s.
Diplomat Concludes K-12 Training With Talk on Caspian Region
The world history teachers in a two-week training workshop at UCLA learned about Azerbaijan and its neighbors from the country's representative in Los Angeles. Consul General Elin Suleymanov also expressed concern about Russian military action in the Caucasus at the lunchtime talk.
Unsettled Deep in Asia
With a film screening and a panel discussion, the UCLA Asia Institute and partners launch a Central Asia Initiative. The goal is to understand societies and cultures long on the fringes of study. Anticipating a UCLA conference in October 2008, historians on the panel ask what changed on the steppes of Central Asia as states acquired the means to move and deport whole peoples, and as nomads increasingly stayed put.

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Central Asia Initiative: Mobility and Governability

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