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Summer 2013 - High School Teacher Workshop: Afghanistan

A three-day summer program for high school teachers, July 29-31, 2013.
Posted: 5/16/2013

Nile Green, director of the Program on Central Asia, wins second book prize

Posted: 4/22/2013

Profile of Nile Green

This engaging portrait of UCLA History Professor Nile Green, who is the director of the Program on Central Asia, was published in the Winter 2013 edition of "The UCLA College Report," a publication of the College of Letters and Science.
Posted: 4/5/2013

International Conference on Afghanistan Aims to Develop Central Asian Studies at UCLA

"Beyond the Bamiyan Buddhas: Archaeology and History in the Modern and Ancient Persianate World" is an upcoming 2-day conference to be held at UCLA and UC Irvine on November 8 and 9, 2012.
Posted: 10/29/2012

UCLA grad returns to share experience on the ground in Afghanistan

After four years with the U.S. Foreign Service, Erin Rattazzi, BA '02, advises students to take advantage of every possible opportunity to learn more about the world and their place in it.
Posted: 7/27/2012

Seeing Afghan history through Afghan eyes

Upcoming conference recognizes the 80th anniversary of the death of Fayz Muhammad Katib, the first major Hazara writer and historian, and the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.
Posted: 11/10/2011

Education Grad Student Reports from Outer Mongolia

Wagatsuma Fellowship Recipient Hugh Schuckman starts fieldwork on Peace Corps and Japanese Overseas Cooperation Volunteers
Posted: 8/26/2011

Writing Travel at Asia's Crossroads

Departing from texts in Chinese, Persian, Urdu and other languages, scholars at an international conference, "The Roads to Oxiana," look at Central Asia in the ages of camel caravans and horsemen and of motor cars and airplanes. Audio podcasts of the conference presentations are now available.
Posted: 11/15/2010

10 Questions: Miriam Robbins Dexter on the Power of Female Display

Miriam Robbins Dexter, a lecturer in the Department of Women's Studies and expert on ancient heroines and goddesses, and a co-author have completed a cross-cultural study of stories and artifacts in which women lift their skirts and expose their genitals, a performance that drives away enemies and returns joy and fertility to the land.
Posted: 10/6/2010

Talk With the Taliban?

Two European-based anthropologists say that Afghans may be more inclined than some others to speak with enemies and to entertain views opposed to their own.
Posted: 12/10/2008

New Focus on Central Asia's Puzzles

Over the coming three years, the UCLA Asia Institute will continue to promote study of Central Asia, with the help of outside faculty and new funding from the International Institute. Last month on campus, international scholars engaged in a day-long discussion on the region's history, arts, and cultures.
Posted: 11/6/2008

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.
Posted: 5/19/2008

Reports

Here are some reference materials from past activities of the inititative.

The Mongols from the Margins: New Perspectives on Central Asians in World History

A one-day conference sponsored by the UCLA Program on Central Asia and the Richard Hovannisian Endowed Chair in Modern Armenian History.

Crossing the Roof of the World: People and Geopolitics in Trans-Himalayan Trade

A Report on Program on Central Asia Conference held February 19, 2010 at UCLA

Central Asia Inititative: Mobility and Governability in Central Asia

Report on Conference held October 18, 2008 at UCLA.

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.

Persia beyond the Oxus Conference Volume Published

Bulletin of the Asia Institute, Volume 21

Publication: Afghanistan in Ink: Literature between Diaspora and Nation

Edited by Nile Green and Nushin Arbabzadah (Columbia/Hurst, 2011)

Working Papers

Rambling Reflections on the Mobility and Governability of Religious Phenomena and Systems in Inner Asia

Franoise Aubin, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)

Local Power and Transnational Resources: An Anthropological Perspective on Rural Rehabilitation in Afghanistan

A working paper by Alessandro Monsutti

War Crimes and Psychological Trauma: Afghan Diasporic Fiction on Afghanistan

A Working Paper by Mir Hekmatullah Sadat

Publication: Language and Sovereignty: A Comparative Analysis of Language Policy in Tatarstan and Kazakhstan, 1991-2010

Kyle L. Marquardt, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Podcasts

The Mongols and the New World History

Opening Remarks by Sebouh Aslanian, Assistant Professor & Richard Hovannisian Endowed Chair in Modern Armenian History. Presented at the one-day conference "The Mongols from the Margins: New Perspectives on Central Asians in World History."
Posted: 3/11/2013

No One Knew Who They Were: Russian Interaction with the Mongols

A lecture by Charles Halperin, Russian and East European Institute, Indiana University, Bloomington. Presented at the one-day conference "The Mongols from the Margins: New Perspectives on Central Asians in World History."
Posted: 3/11/2013

Podcast Archive