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

• January 15, 2009 Panel Discussion: Oil, Gas, and Environment in the Caspian. Hosted by Asia Institute Assistant Director Nick Menzies.

• 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
• Helen Rees, Professor of Ethnomusicology
• Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Director, Center for India and South Asia and Doshi Professor of History

Published: Friday, November 30, 2007

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