InterAsia Online Lecture: Professor Elizabeth Lambourn (De Montfort Univ)
Title: Sweet water on the sea route to China. Forgotten technologies of mobility in the Indian Ocean world.
Title: Sweet water on the sea route to China. Forgotten technologies of mobility in the Indian Ocean world.
In this talk, drawn from my book *The Loss of Hindustan*, I sketch an intellectual
geography for understanding the history of Firishta, written in early seventeenth century
Deccan. The world of the Deccan is both connected to the Indian Ocean circuits,
sketched in Arabic merchant accounts and histories, as well to the network of city-states,
represented by the Persian histories produced in Uch or Delhi. The immediate milieu of
Firishta under the ʿAdil Shahi was a polyphonic Hindustan where the exchange of
In the year 1597 CE, the South Asian Mughal court commissioned a team of Muslim and Hindu scholars to
translate a popular (Hindu) Sanskrit treatise – known as the Laghu-Yoga-Vāsiṣṭha – into the Persian language. This talk seeks to reconstruct the intellectual processes that underlie this collaborative translation, examining the translators’ decisions regarding the Persian rendition of a single Sanskrit word: saṃkalpa, a term with denotations as varied as “imagination,” “mental construction,” “desire,” “will,” and
The Rohingya crisis is one of the world’s worst ongoing human-rights atrocities, but its causes are contested and its consequences are poorly understood. Dr. López Peña and her co-authors marshal a variety of existing and original data to shed light on its drivers, characteristics, and human cost. First, in contrast with the government’s preferred narrative, they show that violence against civilians in Myanmar clearly responds to economic motives: it increases during times when international rice prices are high, in places suitable for rice cultivation.
Cumulative trauma due to displacement and exposure to violence can lead to long-run impacts on mental health, with consequences for human capital accumulation. This may be particularly true for adolescents given that this is a time of intensified emotional distress and a critical period for development. Using mixed-methods longitudinal data from the Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence (GAGE) study on over 6,000 refugee adolescents aged 10-17 and their local peers in Bangladesh and Jordan this research explores the challenges faced by adolescents growing up under forced displacement.
In this talk, drawn from my book *The Loss of Hindustan*, I sketch an intellectual geography for understanding the history of Firishta, written in early seventeenth century Deccan. The world of the Deccan is both connected to the Indian Ocean circuits, sketched in Arabic merchant accounts and histories, as well to the network of city-states, represented by the Persian histories produced in Uch or Delhi. The immediate milieu of Firishta under the ʿAdil Shahi was a polyphonic Hindustan where the exchange of knowledge, letters, and histories was foundational.
The City and the Wilderness recounts the journeys and microhistories of Indo-Persian travelers across the Indian Ocean and their encounters with the Burmese Kingdom and its littoral at the turn of the nineteenth century. As Mughal sovereignty waned under British colonial rule, Indo-Persian travelers and intermediaries linked to the East India Company explored and surveyed the Burmese Empire, inscribing it as a forest landscape and Buddhist kingdom at the crossroads of South and Southeast Asia.
Join the Yale Arab Students Association for a panel discussion on Lebanon in 2021, featuring Sally Abi Khalil, 2020 World Fellow and Country Director of Oxfam in Lebanon. Please register in advance to receive the Zoom meeting link.
Movie screening available from Friday February 12th, 2021 to be followed by Panel and Q&A session on Monday, February 15th , 2021.
Join us as Epaminondas Farmakis, founder of HumanRights360, and Sally Abi Khalil, Country Director of Oxfam in Lebanon, bring us up to date on the refugee and migrant experience during the Covid19 year in Greece and Lebanon.