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CU 51传媒 religious studies professor says Twelver Shi鈥檌sm is open to discourse

Elizabeth Williams — Mon, 02 Jun 2025 18:38:14 +0000

CU 51传媒 religious studies professor says Twelver Shi鈥檌sm is open to discourse Elizabeth Williams Mon, 06/02/2025 - 12:38 Bradley Worrell

The original version of this article appeared in Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine

Associate Professor Aun Hasan Ali鈥檚 book about Islam鈥檚 School of Hillah explores the dynamics and formation of Twelver Shi鈥檌sm, arguing that the faith was open to diverse intellectual traditions

Twelver Shi鈥檌sm, the largest branch of Shi鈥檌te Islam, tends to be viewed as fundamentally authoritarian, particularly as seen through the lens of the ideology of the Iranian government.

Aun Hasan Ali, associate professor in the University of Colorado 51传媒 Department of Religious Studies whose area of focus is on Islamic intellectual history, particularly pre-modern Twelver Shi鈥檌 traditions, says he believes that modern perceptions of the faith have been colored by the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

鈥淚t was an unprecedented moment in a lot of ways, because for the first time in the history of Shi鈥檌sm, you had a theory of government where the jurist was the head of the state,鈥� he says. 鈥淭raditionally, there was always a kind of separation between those two spheres.鈥�

As a result, Ali says the idea took root among some in the West and also in the Muslim Sunni tradition that Shi鈥檌 clerics were free to make whatever political or religious decisions they pleased, because they were not bound by the history of tradition. However, that鈥檚 not an accurate portrayal of how jurists and other followers come to decisions in Twelver Shi鈥檌 religious tradition, he adds.

Instead, Ali makes the case that Twelver Shi鈥檌sm is better understood as a 鈥渄iscursive tradition,鈥� which, as defined by noted cultural anthropologist Talal Asad, involves researching foundational Islamic texts, such as the Quran and the writings of exemplary historical Shi鈥檌 religious figures, for context. Ali says his own definition of discursive tradition is tied less to foundational texts and more to how noted Shi鈥檌 religious figures interpreted those texts, as that is how most followers of the faith first engage on religious topics.

鈥淚n the same way that someone addressing ethics in contemporary philosophy needs to address (Immanuel) Kant, for instance, I view that as a parameter of the conversation,鈥� he explains. 鈥淪imilarly, when it comes to Islamic tradition, there are important figures that one needs to address. So, in the simplest terms, a discursive tradition should be thought of as a conversation across time and space among experts.鈥�

In contrast to the idea that scholars make decisions based solely upon their authority, Ali contends that thinking of the Twelver Shi鈥檌 faith as a discursive tradition means the faith continually remains open to discussion, debate, mediation and modification.

Ali鈥檚 ideas on discursive tradition were shaped in part by his PhD dissertation on the School of Hillah, a center of religious learning that played a major role in preserving and promoting Twelver Shi鈥檌 Islamic religious traditions, while also being open to integrating diverse intellectual traditions, during its formative years, from the 12th to 14th centuries. Ali鈥檚 revised dissertation was published in 2023 by I.B. Taurus as the book, The School of Hillah and the Formation of Twelver Shi鈥檌 Islamic Tradition, which is being translated into Arabic for wider distribution.

Recently, Ali spoke with Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine about the importance of the School of Hillah in the formation of Twelver Shi鈥檌sm and its profound effect on the Shi鈥檌 faith today. His answers have been lightly edited and condensed for space considerations.

Question: Why does the School of Hillah take root in what is now southern Iraq?

Ali: Hillah becomes a center of scholarship for two reasons. One is that you have a (regional) Shi鈥檌 dynasty come to power that patronizes these scholars. The second reason is that you have the Mongol invasion in the 13th century, which pushes a lot of people looking to escape that devastation southward.

So, you end up with a concentration of scholars who are sought-after in the region. People travel to Hillah from the Levant, from Bahrain and from Iran. They travel there because they were seeking expert education, and the major figures of Hillah were the undisputed experts. (Students) came there to receive that kind of education in the same way that today somebody might come to CU seeking a world-class program in astrophysics. The same thing was happening in Hillah; they came there to learn from these masters.

With the Mongol invasion, sure, there鈥檚 devastation, but there are also opportunities. There are trade routes that enrich particular families in the area, and, as we all know, education requires money, so the influx of wealth also becomes a reason why they鈥檙e able to offer patronage to those scholars.

Question: Is the School of Hillah equivalent to what we would think of today as a university or maybe a seminary?

Ali: Certainly, it鈥檚 different in the sense that it鈥檚 not primarily organized in brick-and-mortar institutions. It鈥檚 more unstructured. Classes took place in the home of an individual, a prominent scholar.

It鈥檚 similar in the sense of curriculum. What I mean is that certain texts come to be understood as definitive of a tradition. And that鈥檚 part of the reason why Hillah is so important. A lot of the texts that we think of today as being definitive of Shi鈥檌 tradition were written in Hillah and continue to be studied today, so we can think of it in terms of there is, not uniformity, but an expectation that anybody who masters this tradition would read these texts. In that sense, it鈥檚 similar.

It鈥檚 also similar in the sense of structures of authority. Just as someone wishing to put forth a view in, let鈥檚 say, American jurisprudence, has to engage particular jurists; similarly, somebody wishing to put forward a view in Shi鈥檌 theology has to engage with the views of particular jurists. So, structures of authority can be similar in that way. The idea of a curriculum can be similar in that way, but it鈥檚 not organized as a single space in primarily brick-and-mortar institutions.

That was actually one of the points in the book. The organizing principle of the School of Hillah is these large families in which particular types of expertise is concentrated. So, one family may have an expertise in genealogy; another family may have an expertise in philosophy; while another family may have an expertise in law. These large families (in the community) structure the School of Hillah. And, of course, people intermarry between these families, so it becomes a network of intellectuals.

Question: For the students who completed their studies at Hillah, did they generally go on to become clerics and religious scholars?

Ali: If we look at the contemporary Twelver Shi鈥檌 tradition, it runs the full gamut. Before you have modern schools, people learn basic numeracy and literacy in religious institutions, which is the same as it was in the West.

Some of those people, after getting basic literacy and numeracy, go on to become merchants or preachers, for example. A smaller group will become teachers within the institution, and then a (small percentage) of those will become the next generation of masters of the tradition. Most people don鈥檛 reach that level, because it takes a long time鈥攚e鈥檙e talking maybe 20 years or more鈥攖o be considered competent within that tradition. It鈥檚 a very grueling process, and most people leave before they finish the entire process.

Question: Can you talk about how your idea of discursive tradition contrasts with the idea of jurists having the authority to make whatever decisions they want?

Ali: That鈥檚 exactly the idea I was pushing back against in the book鈥攖his kind of free-for-all idea about authority. That鈥檚 not to say authority isn鈥檛 important, or that jurists don鈥檛 exercise that kind of authority. But again, they do it within the horizons of possibility that are shaped by discursive tradition, as a conversation across space and time.

And yes, there鈥檚 a kind of push and pull where a really important figure can push a conversation forward, can expand at the horizons of possibility, but it鈥檚 not an arbitrary process. It鈥檚 a process that鈥檚 linked to the past at the same time that it looks ahead.

Question: Were there any major developments or contributions that came out of the School of Hillah that made a profound impact on Islam today?

Ali: Philosophy becoming integrated into theology is something that we can look to Hillah for, within the Shi鈥檌 world. That development takes place earlier within the Sunni world, but in the Shi鈥檌 world, Avicenna鈥檚 philosophy, or Avicenna鈥檚 metaphysics, comes to be integrated into Shi鈥檌 theology. In that time period, the integration of mysticism into Shi鈥檌sm is also something that happens in Hillah.

"There鈥檚 a kind of push and pull where a really important figure can push a conversation forward, can expand at the horizons of possibility, but it鈥檚 not an arbitrary process. It鈥檚 a process that鈥檚 linked to the past at the same time that it looks ahead."

When we think of (Islamic) law, that鈥檚 really one of the most important contributions that happens at Hillah, and you see the integration of advanced mathematics and advanced science into law. For example, in Islamic law, figuring out the direction of prayer from a distance, given the curvature of the earth is also a complicated thing, which leads to advanced discussions of science and mathematics integrated into the chapter on ritual prayer, for instance. Those would be a few examples.

At Hillah, you also have the production of these kinds of biographical dictionaries. So, when Muslims evaluate a piece of information, part of the way they evaluate it is by looking at who communicated that information. You can imagine that it would be very useful to have a kind of a biographical dictionary, where you could look up a particular individual and see what they were like. Were they known to be somebody who had scholarly expertise? Were they known to be somebody who was an upright person? Or were they known to be unscrupulous in the way that they narrated information? These kinds of biographical dictionaries, which facilitate legal discussions and conversations, were produced at Hillah.

Question: Despite the School of Hillah鈥檚 contributions to Islamic thought, you say there is not much scholarship about it. Why do you think that is?

Ali: I believe a lot of it has to do with the history of Islamic studies in the West鈥攁nd that only in recent years has Shi鈥檌sm gotten the attention it deserved. Previously, scholars who studied Islam largely dealt with Sunni sources. And so, even when they talked about Shi鈥檌sm, they were talking about it through the lens of Sunni authors and Sunni sources.

This is despite the fact that Shi鈥檌tes鈥攚hile making up somewhere between 15 and 20 percent of the (Muslim) population鈥攖heir contributions, intellectually, to Islamic tradition has been disproportionate.

Things started to change in the 1980s and 1990s, but even among scholars focused on Shi鈥檌sm, they have tended to focus on its origins, or trying to explain how the Iranian Revolution happened, so in both of those ways Hillah was ignored.

Question: Do you have any particular hopes for your book?

Ali: In general, the book has been received well. I think that people (in Islamic studies) recognize this was a crucial period in Shi鈥檌 religious history that hadn鈥檛 really been sketched out the way I did in the book.

In terms of contributing to a broader discussion, my hope is the book brings together theoretical conversations in religious studies with meticulous historical scholarship. In Islamic studies, it鈥檚 sometimes separated by people who do theoretically rigorous projects and people who do meticulous historical scholarship. I tried to do both, and I hope that the book contributes to bridging the gap between these two different approaches within Islamic studies.

Aun Hasan Ali, CU 51传媒 associate professor of religious studies, argues that modern perceptions of Twelver Shi'ism have been colored by the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

In The School of Hillah and the Formation of Twelver Shi鈥檌 Islamic Tradition, which is being translated into Arabic for wider distribution, author Aun Hasan Ali explores the School of Hillah, a center of religious learning that played a major role in preserving and promoting Twelver Shi鈥檌 Islamic religious traditions.

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Women on trial speak clearly through their clothing

Elizabeth Williams — Tue, 27 May 2025 14:55:03 +0000

Women on trial speak clearly through their clothing Elizabeth Williams Tue, 05/27/2025 - 08:55 Collette Mace

This article was originally posted in Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine

CU 51传媒 researcher Carla Jones finds that what Indonesian women wear in court can convey messages of piety and shame, or just the appearance of them

No matter who you are and what clothes you have on, you have probably, at some point, thought about how what you wear affects how you are seen.

Fashion is an important mode of self-expression, but it can also be a significant component of social communication. University of Colorado 51传媒 anthropology Professor Carla Jones鈥� recently published research focusing on fashion within the Indonesian criminal justice system illustrates how appearance can be a public and personal feature of social and political communication.

Jones鈥� interest in Indonesia started when she visited the country in college, but her youth in Southeast Asia also played a part in her sustained interest in the culture there. As an anthropologist, she says, she is interested in diversity鈥搃n which Indonesian culture and social life is rich.

She also credits her interest in learning to speak Indonesian with her total immersion there. 鈥淟earning a new language can change your life,鈥� she says. 鈥淐ultural anthropologists need to be able to ask questions and understand. You have to learn how to be an insider and an outsider at once.鈥�

In the past two decades, public political culture in Indonesia has become increasingly focused on corruption. Although Indonesia is not unusually corrupt, many of the most visible corruption trials have captivated public attention through media focus on theft of public funds.

Jones noticed that when women were accused of corruption, they faced intense scrutiny about their appearances, both before and during their trials. Jones says she noticed that female defendants in corruption cases adjusted their clothing in ways that went far beyond the public norms for the majority-Muslim country.

Modesty was a particularly compelling visual strategy. Although modest styles are increasingly popular globally (think: trad-wife trends on TikTok), the styles that accused Indonesian women adopted for trials were especially visible when they appeared in court and were very different from their styles of dress prior to their trials, Jones says.

Many women, she says, would elect to wear facial coverings, called a niqab or cadar, when appearing before a judge. Wearing a niqab is not especially common in Indonesia. Jones argues in her paper that women choosing to express their religion so outwardly was also an effort to appear more pious and ashamed of their actions (or more innocent) to judges and to the public.

Niqab in court

So, does it work? According to Jones, yes, along with other factors. The women in these cases who wore a niqab to court tended to get shorter prison sentences than others did. 鈥淭heir attorneys also did a really good job conveying that they are mothers, and their justification was to provide for their children,鈥� she says.

However, that doesn鈥檛 mean these women on trial were received the same way all over the world. When Anniesa Hasibuan, an internationally famous modest-fashion designer who was charged with fraud, took the stand in West Java, the coverage expanded to all over the world, including the United States.

The international coverage of Hasibuan鈥檚 trial called additional attention to her choice to wear a niqab. Some Indonesians who were following her case closely viewed her choice to cover her face much as some Americans might: as an attempt to foreclose transparency about her appearance and therefore her finances. Many Indonesians viewed her appearance as a sign of dishonesty rather than piety.

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Asia Symposium 2025 鈥� InterAsian Circulations April 11, 2025

Elizabeth Williams — Mon, 19 May 2025 15:45:14 +0000

Asia Symposium 2025 鈥� InterAsian Circulations April 11, 2025 Elizabeth Williams Mon, 05/19/2025 - 09:45 Rachel Rinaldo

This year's Asia Symposium examined the historic and contemporary connections within and beyond Asia, with attention to phenomena such as migration, religious and cultural movements, and political/economic connections.

The first panel, on Religious and Social movements, investigated the contours of several contemporary social movements and their transnational connections. Yi-Ling Chen (University of Wyoming) compared the social housing movements in Taiwan and South Korea and explored how they have influenced each other. Dheepa Sundaram (University of Denver) discussed how the contemporary Hindutva movement has taken shape in digital spaces and involved both diasporic connections and linkages with US right wing and white supremacist movements. Neda Shaban (CU 51传媒) discussed the anti-hijab movement in Iran and how it has been shaped by diasporic politics.

The second panel, on Migration and Refugee Circulations, explored migration from the perspective of Asian societies. David Cook-Martin (CU 51传媒) discussed the migration of Indian indentured workers to Mauritius and the West Indies and how this created legal and institutional templates for temporary labor migration that continue to shape global mobility patterns today. Jerry Jacka (CU 51传媒) talked about how resource extraction and climate change in Papua New Guinea have reshaped traditional forms of internal migration and circulation. Shae Frydenlund (CU 51传媒) discussed her research on Rohingya refugee women in Malaysia and how they have used online platforms to make money and supplement their families' meager income.

In his keynote, Ismail Fajrie Alatas (NYU) discussed the history of alternative forms of circulation and mobility of Muslim Sufi scholars across the Indian ocean. He argued that their concept of wil膩ya, which encapsulates ideas about friendship across territoriality, offers a vision of a trans-regional geography shaped by protection, care, hospitality, and grace. Thinking with this concept opens up a fresh perspective on circulations across Asia, past and present.

The 2025 Asia Symposium was made possible by the National Resource Center/FLAS grant from the US Department of Education.

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Very Successful "A Feminist Lens on Global China" Colloquium

Elizabeth Williams — Mon, 12 May 2025 15:55:48 +0000

Very Successful "A Feminist Lens on Global China" Colloquium Elizabeth Williams Mon, 05/12/2025 - 09:55 Robert Wyrod

With generous support from the Center for Asian Studies, the Department of Women and Gender Studies at the University of Colorado 51传媒 was able to host a one-day colloquium on feminist perspectives on Global China as part of the Department's 50th Anniversary celebration. The rise of China as a new global economic and political force has spurred the rapid growth of the field of Global China studies. Yet, research focused on gender and sexuality remains quite limited. This colloquium was a rare event that brought together an international group of scholars to help foster more robust feminist perspectives on Global China. Scholars from the United States, United Kingdom, China, Zimbabwe, and South Africa participated in the event. The three panels covered a wide range of issues related to Global China, including labor relations, intimate relationships, and cultural representations. The event was well attended by students, faculty, and staff and a virtual component allowed many more people to attend from around the world. The panelists are currently exploring ways to share the insights from the event more widely, including a special journal issue that could help spark more research on the gender and sexual dynamics of Global China.

Speaker(s):

Ching Kwan Lee, UCLA
Marie Berry, University of Denver
Yoon Jung Park, Georgetown
Mingwei Huang, Dartmouth
Sisasenkosi Mataruse, University of Zimbabwe
Prolific Mataruse, University of Zimbabwe
Vivian Lu, Rice
Ivy Gikonyo, University of Pretoria, South Africa
Charlotte Goodburn, King鈥檚 College London
Soumya Mishra, King鈥檚 College London
Matthew Chin, University of Virginia
Yiping Cai, UC Irvine
Eram Ashraf, Swansea University, UK
Xinlei Sha, Cornell
Justin Haruyama, University of British Colombia
Xianan Jin, University of Exeter, UK
Colloquium organizer: Robert Wyrod, Associate Professor, Women and Gender Studies Department and International Affairs Program, CU 51传媒

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Center for Asian Studies Student and Faculty Achievements

Elizabeth Williams — Mon, 05 May 2025 15:02:24 +0000

Center for Asian Studies Student and Faculty Achievements Elizabeth Williams Mon, 05/05/2025 - 09:02

Asian Studies Graduates

B. A. in Asian Studies

Tae Chapmann Minors: History and Korean
Lily Elliott Second Major: B.S. Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Chloe Nowak Additional Majors: Psychology, Chinese Language and Civilization, Leadership and Community Engagement
Light Scheppy Second Major: Japanese Language and Literature; Minor: Korean
Sanskriti Shrestha Minors: Chinese, Japanese, Leadership Studies
Elena Wilson Second Major: Political Science

Asian Studies Minor

Elizabeth Craig Majors: Political Science and History
Shelby Glenn Majors: History and International Affairs; Second Minor: Classics
Aidan Vance Major: History

Certificate in Tibetan and Himalayan Studies

Luke Stumpfl Major: Anthropology; Minor: Geography

CAS Student Awards

Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships

Graduate Student Fellows 2024-25 Academic Year

Aaron Bhatoya Hindi (History)
Jeanne Cho Japanese (History)
Nicholas Christoffersen Korean (Mathematics)
Jake Fischer Japanese (ALC)
Nicolas Jones Japanese (History)
Emily Swertfeger Arabic (History)

Graduate Student Fellows Summer 2025

Geneieve Hauer Chinese (Religious Studies)
Jessica Misiorek Japanese (Anthropology)
Casey Ringer Japanese (History)

Undergraduate Student Fellows Summer 2025

Malia Donoghue Chinese (Integrative Physiology)
Ian Comer Japanese (ALC)

Edward G. Seidensticker Japan Summer 2025 Research Grants

Ivan-Daniel Espinosa Theatre and Performance Studies
Ubochi Igbokwe Ethnomusicology

Japanese Studies Scholarship Fellows 2024-2025 Academic Year

Brandon Edwards Asian Languages and Civilizations
Evelyn Emery Asian Languages and Civilizations
Haruka Fujii Asian Languages and Civilizations
Sam Hensley Art and Art History
Lillith Jackson Asian Languages and Civilizations
Nicholas Jones History
Jessica Misiorek Anthropology
Casey Ringer History
Nyla Schaberg Asian Languages and Civilizations
Mikhail Skovoronskikh Asian Languages and Civilizations
Raisa Stebbins Asian Languages and Civilizations
Juliana Valverde Asian Languages and Civilizations
Taoxuan Xu Asian Languages and Civilizations

CAS Faculty Awards

Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant

Dwi Purwanto Indonesian Language Instruction

Cultures and Languages Across the Curriculum Course Development Grant

Nidhi Arya Asian Languages and Civilizations

Asian Studies Course Development Grants

Brianne Cohen Art & Art History
Lauren Collins Asian Studies
Shae Frydenlund Asian Studies
Miriam Kadia Kingsburg History
Daryl Maude Asian Languages and Civilizations
Jianmin Shao Ethnic Studies
Molly Todd Sociology

Join us for the Center for Asian Studies commencement and celebration of student and faculty achievement on Friday, May 9 at 1:30 p.m. in the CASE Building, 4th floor.

Congratulations!

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Asian Studies Senior Research Showcase

Elizabeth Williams — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 15:38:50 +0000

Asian Studies Senior Research Showcase Elizabeth Williams Mon, 04/28/2025 - 09:38

Tuesday April 29, 12:30pm-1:30pm
CASE E351

Join us for lunch and a poster presentation session highlighting the exceptional work of undergraduate student research on Asia鈥檚 histories, cultures, and pressing contemporary issues. This event celebrates academic curiosity and provides a platform for the next generation of scholars making meaningful contributions to our understanding of Asia.

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CUBASGA 2025: The 26th Anniversary

Elizabeth Williams — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 21:14:05 +0000

CUBASGA 2025: The 26th Anniversary Elizabeth Williams Tue, 04/22/2025 - 15:14 Taoxuan Xu

The 26th CU 51传媒 Asian Studies Graduate Association (CUBASGA) annual conference was held successfully over the weekend of 22 and 23 February 2025. CUBASGA is one of the largest graduate student conferences in the field of Asian Studies and is run entirely by graduate students from the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations. We provide a platform for MA and PhD students to present their papers, receive feedback from faculty and fellow students, as well as make interdisciplinary connections within the broad field of Asian Studies.

This year, we had nearly forty student speakers from prestigious institutions all around the world sharing their research across 11 panels over two days. On top of our visiting student speakers, we also had 20 speakers from CU 51传媒, all hailing from various departments. Students from the CU Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations, Anthropology, History, and Religious Studies presented their findings, which facilitated lively multidisciplinary discussions throughout the course of the conference. We also invited two distinguished scholars as our keynote speakers: Professor Ronald Egan from Stanford University and Professor David C. Atherton from Harvard University.

Professor Egan鈥�s keynote address placed the extensive oeuvre of 11th-Century poet and essayist Su Shi in the spotlight. Specifically, how should we read a collection of hundreds of texts, spanning multiple genres, all authored by the same individual? While many existing compilations group these texts by genre, Professor Egan proposed selecting and reordering the individual texts chronologically, thus reading these texts alongside Su Shi鈥檚 life progression. His fascinating talk highlighted how new connections can be drawn from a careful and well-considered reorganization of the oeuvre. Prof. Atherton gave a talk on a story written by Japanese Edo period writer, scholar, and poet Ueda Akinari in the last years of his life, which sheds light on a transformative period for waka poetry in the late eighteenth century. He shed light on the transition of waka poetry, from being the cultural property of aristocrats to a genre studied and experimented upon by people from all walks of life. Professor Atherton鈥檚 presentation invited the audience to reflect upon the composition of poetry, as well as the transmission of creative teaching. Both talks were followed by spirited discussions with questions asked by both graduate students and faculty members.

Moreover, the attendees of this year鈥檚 CUBASGA were not limited to faculty, staff, and graduate students. Undergraduate students from our Chinese and Japanese language classes, as well as students in STEM majors were also present, listening to presentations and participating in lively discussions. After the conference, attendees were invited to our post-conference dinner at You & Mee Noodle House, where speakers and professors were able to interact in a less formal setting. Many of them continued their debates and established stronger connections with one another.

This year鈥檚 CUBASGA was a great success based on the feedback and messages we have heard and received from our speakers and other attendees. The continued prestige of the conference is in large part thanks to the generous financial support of the CU 51传媒 Center for Asian Studies, Cultural Events Board, and the Department of Asian Languages and Civilization. We will strive to maintain this high level of reputation for the CUBASGA annual conference, and will continue to facilitate graduate student research, cooperation and network building in the future.

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Event Friday - Things That Come and Go: Ephemera and Atmospherics in Times of Crisis

Elizabeth Williams — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 16:24:49 +0000

Event Friday - Things That Come and Go: Ephemera and Atmospherics in Times of Crisis Elizabeth Williams Mon, 04/14/2025 - 10:24

Friday, April 18 at 4pm
Hale 230

Professor Patricia Spyer will offer the Distinguished Lecture in Cultural Anthropology for the 2024-25 academic year. Her lecture will address the intersection of aesthetics, appearances, and the rise of public visual culture in Eastern Indonesia. Her recent book Orphaned Landscapes: Violence, Visuality, and Appearance in Indonesia, on Christian public art in Ambon, has been well received. Her new research, funded by a Swiss National Sciences Fund grant, expands that visual cultural research to other areas of Indonesia鈥擝anda, Bali, Ternate, and Tidore. By expanding regionally, the project also emphasizes interconnection and circulation: of images, ideas, and commodities, as well as historical spans.

Notwithstanding the anthropological commitment to understanding everyday life in all its diversity, from banal to extraordinary circumstances, the discipline has tended to shy away from difficult to grasp if palpable phenomena like ambiance, climate, and atmospherics. Drawing on examples from her book, Orphaned Landscapes: Violence, Visuality, and Appearance in Indonesia (Fordham 2022), She will explore how fugitive forces and forms suffused and oriented the actions and experiences of wartime, from Karl von Klausewitz鈥檚鈥渇og of war鈥� to huge Christian billboards and murals that sprung up in the Muslim-Christian conflict in Ambon, Indonesia in the early 2000s. Such elusive, ephemeral aspects of social life鈥攆rom street art to invisible if palpable atmospherics deserve our acute attention. For even as they come and go, such phenomena can have a lasting impact. Depositing their traces in an assortment of practices and forms they bring about novel formations of sociality and the sensible, altered landscapes of living and cohabitation, and subtly different ways of seeing, dwelling, and engaging the world.

Patricia Spyer is a faculty member in Anthropology at the Graduate Institute of Geneva.

鈥嬧€嬧€嬧€嬧€嬧€嬧€婽his event is funded in part by a grant by the Title VI National Resource Center grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

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Friday - Asia Symposium 2025: InterAsian Circulations

Elizabeth Williams — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 15:29:40 +0000

Friday - Asia Symposium 2025: InterAsian Circulations Elizabeth Williams Mon, 04/07/2025 - 09:29

Friday, April 11th
Center for British and Irish Studies, 5th floor
Norlin Library

11:30am-12:15pm Meet and Greet/Reception

12:15pm Introductions and Welcome

12:30-2pm Panel 1: Religious and Social Movements in Asia
In recent years, religious and social movements have been dynamic forces in Asian societies. This panel examines the contours of such movements and their politics, with attention to how they circulate within and beyond national borders.

2:15-3:45pm Panel 2: Migration and Refugee Circulations in Asia
Scholars and policy analysts have traditionally thought of migration as occurring from Asia to Europe, Australia/New Zealand, or the United States. Yet in 2020, out of 111 million migrants from Asia, more than 50 percent migrated to other countries within Asia. Migration is also increasingly occurring within Asian countries. This panel examines migration from the perspective of Asian societies.

4-5pm Keynote presentation:
Sea of Friends: Wil膩ya as a Moral Framework of InterAsian Circulation
Ismail Alatas, NYU

Find paper abstracts and speaker bios here.

This event is funded in part by a grant by the Title VI National Resource Center grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

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Event Wednesday - FIRST THEY KILLED MY FATHER - Keynote with LOUNG UNG

Elizabeth Williams — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 16:44:56 +0000

Event Wednesday - FIRST THEY KILLED MY FATHER - Keynote with LOUNG UNG Elizabeth Williams Mon, 03/31/2025 - 10:44

Wednesday, April 2nd
11am
St. Cajetan's, MSU Denver

From a childhood survivor of the Cambodian genocide under the regime of Pol Pot, this is a riveting narrative of war crimes and desperate actions, the unnerving strength of a small girl and her family, and their triumph of spirit.
One of seven children of a high-ranking government official, Loung Ung lived a privileged life in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh until the age of five. Then, in April 1975, Pol Pot鈥檚 Khmer Rouge army stormed into the city, forcing Ung鈥檚 family to flee and, eventually, to disperse. Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, her siblings were sent to labor camps, and those who survived the horrors would not be reunited until the Khmer Rouge was destroyed.

Harrowing yet hopeful, Loung鈥檚 powerful story is an unforgettable account of a family shaken and shattered, yet miraculously sustained by courage and love in the face of unspeakable brutality.

Loung Ung is a bestselling author, activist, and screenwriter. Loung began her activism work in 1993 as a Community Educator for a domestic shelter in Maine, and has since been involved in various campaigns, including those against violence towards women, the use of child soldiers, and landmine eradication worldwide. She has made over 40 trips back to Cambodia, dedicating herself to helping her native land recover from the traumas of war. Loung has given keynote addresses at numerous forums in the US and internationally, including at Stanford University, Dartmouth College, Philips Academy, and Women in the World Summit, among others. Her work has been featured in numerous media outlets and documentaries, including The New York Times, CNN, and Fresh Air with Terry Gross.

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