In this chapter, I am examining the Pashtun nationalist claims in the context of the Afghanistan government’s historical resistance to officially recognizing the Durand Line. What has been the reaction of Afghanistan’s successive governments to the Durand Line? Can this resistance be characterized as a national…

Talk by Sadia Mahmood, South Asia Program, Cornell University

Mainstream historiography on South Asia has largely overlooked the afterlives of the colonial Enemy Property regime in postcolonial India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Drawing on archival records from Pakistan and India, as well as oral accounts from…

Achieve fluency in a language of South Asia with the help of a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) summer fellowship. You’ll gain valuable knowledge about cultures and countries in which your language is commonly used, while developing skills in a language critical to the needs of the United States. Graduate…

Talk by Aditya Bhattacharjee (Asian Studies, Cornell University)

The cultural affinities that have long connected South and Southeast Asia are particularly visible in Thailand, one of the first countries to recognize India after independence and a nation that occupies a prominent place both in India’s…

Join us to learn about opportunities for graduate students with the Einaudi Center for International Studies. This session will discuss how to discover or strengthen global interests, including research and travel grants, guest lectures, fellowships, and more!

Can't attend? Email…

Book talk by Shani Rohit De (History, Yale University) and Ornit Shani (Asian Studies, University of Haifa)

In this paradigm-shifting history, Rohit De and Ornit Shani re-examine the making of the Indian constitution from the perspective of the country's people. In a departure from dominant approaches…

Talk by Llerena Guiu Searle (Anthropology, University of Rochester)

In order to build a more just world order, philosopher Olúfémi Táíwo argues that we must contend with the fact that our current social order builds on relations of colonialism that did not end with colonial independence in the 1940s-1960s.…

Talk by Aniket Aga (Geography, University at Buffalo, SUNY)

Environmental regulation was among the chief reasons for the secular discrediting of the second Congress-led federal government under Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh in India (2009–14) and the electoral victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)…

Talk by Karen Donoghue (Journalism and Mass Communication at North Eastern Hill University)

In an era marked by migration, identity and community dynamics are constantly remade, throwing into sharp relief questions of belonging that must be addressed through a post-nationalist lens. My own scholarly focus…

Nebula and Ursula K. Le Guin Award winning author Vajra Chandrasekera discusses his writing with Anindita Banerjee, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, and Suman Seth, Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow and Marie Underhill Noll Professor of the History of Science.

Vajra Chandrasekera is from…

Talk by Anu Ahmed (Anthropology, University of Rochester)

The Republic of Maldives has been undergoing rapid social transformations since the country’s democratization in 2008. A decade later yielded the Maldives’ ‘psy’ turn when, starting at the end of 2018, the incoming President prioritized mental health…

This conference explores the interrelationships among political literary, and religious culture in early second-millennium South India and Sri Lanka. Scholars of premodern South Asia and Indian Ocean political culture now recognize that transregional processes fundamentally shaped political environments in this…

Talk by Ateya Khorakiwala (Architecture, Columbia University)

What architectural technologies were deployed in response to colonial famine? A history of food is, at its most radical, a history of the production of poverty as a systematic condition and an institutional discourse. This paper seeks to locate…

Talk by Rahul Sagar (Political Science, NYU Abu Dhabi)

Letters to an Indian Raja (1891) was the first work of political theory to be published in modern India. It advised Maharajas to introduce liberal values and constitutional government in the self-governing Native States. Such reform would, it argued,…

Talk by Suvaid Yaseen (Asian Studies, Hamilton College)

The history of Muslim political thought in the disputed Kashmir region of South Asia has largely been narrated within the national frameworks of India and Pakistan, and often overdetermined by security concerns, especially when it comes to Islamic…

Title to be shared closer to the event date.

Sampreety is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Cornell.

Come to the LRC to practice your language skills and meet new people. Conversation Hours provide an opportunity to use the target language in an informal, low-pressure atmosphere. Have fun practicing a language you are learning! Gain confidence through experience! Just using your new language skills helps you learn…