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The Center for Asian Studies will hold a virtual version of our lunch series this fall. While we are exercising caution about returning to live events, we look forward to reestablishing contact with our community of Asianists on campus.

The luncheons are intended to be informal scholarly exchanges about work-in-progress, and networking opportunities.

How does climate influence population change in semi-arid regions of the Indian sub-continent? The answer might be water access and food security.

CAS Lunch Series
Thursday, September 30 at 12:30pm

Anthropogenic climate change will be one of the biggest social and economic disruptors over the 21st century, particularly in densely populated areas in the tropics. Climate studies are warning that even in a 20C warmer world, climate hotspots of the tropics will experience direct and indirect climate impacts that will have long-lasting implications for food security and geopolitical stability (IPCC 2021). One of the key regions is the sub-continent, which is responsible for most of food crops, substantial amounts of cash crops and livelihoods that depend on these agricultural activities. The subcontinent is also home to some of the most threatened climate hotspots. Quantifying information extracted from 18th-20th century British colonial administrative documents pertinent to Madras and Bombay presidencies of peninsular India, we show that vast population changes during times of small climate fluctuations (rain failure induced famines) were tied to food security; low food security was responsible for vast changes in population, both on account of migration and death. This study has strong implications for our understanding of climate impacts socioeconomic and health infrastructure in resource poor regions of the sub-continent

Atreyee Bhattacharya​ 
Atreyee is a paleoclimatologist who studies the nature, causes and socioeconomic impacts of climate variability in semi-arid climate hotspots of the global south. Atreyee currently hold a research faculty appointment at the University of Colorado, Boulder and an adjunct faculty member at the department of Social studies and humanities at the Indraprastha Institution of Information Technology (IIIT), New Delhi (since 2020).  She holds a PhD in earth and planetary sciences from Harvard and has extensive experience in popular science writing. You can follow her work here (website: )

Projecting China: Trade Engagement in Beijing’s Half Century

CAS Luncheon Series
Thursday, October 28 at 12:30pm

The People’s Republic of China has confronted the United States with diplomatic challenges ever since Washington recognized Beijing in the 1970s.  Basic to this engagement was (and is) economics, and particularly trade, which elicited American responses ranging from enmity, fear, and uncertainty to hope and cooperation.  Scholarship has not focused enough attention on the ideals and values that undergirded commercial relations as America’s principal approach to China.  By beginning with the Nixon opening to Beijing and ending with the Trump trade war (with touchstones in the Nixon, Bush I, Clinton, Obama, and Trump years), this presentation analyzes how a bilateral trading relationship that so transformed the world evolved from recognition to rivalry.  The answer to the wax and wane lies in the near-century long practice of American free-trade internationalism, guided by the principles of a “capitalist peace” paradigm that the United States long embraced as a pillar of its foreign policy.

Tom Zeiler is a Professor of History and Director of the Program in International Affairs at the University of Colorado Boulder.  He specializes in American history, focused on diplomacy,  economics, baseball, and World War II.  This talk is drawn from his forthcoming book, Capitalist Peace: A History of American Free Trade Internationalism, to be published by Oxford University Press.

Ibn Idris al-Hilli (d. 1202) and the transformation of Shii law

CAS Luncheon Series
Thursday, November 11 at 11am

The century after Abu Jafar al-Tusi (d. 1067) is regarded as a period of stagnation in the history of Shii law. Imitation of Tusi was so widespread that later jurists mistook his opinion for the prevalent opinion of the school. Over the next two centuries, the landscape of Shii law would change dramatically. The sea change began with sustained criticism of Tusi led by Ibn Idris al-Hilli (d. 1202). In this presentation, I will explain Ibn Idris’s critique of Tusi. Although Ibn Idris’s approach won few supporters, he succeeded in rejuvenating Shii law by injecting the lifeblood of tradition into the discourse: conflict. Furthermore, while conflict is essential, I will explain why the loss of early written sources and the growth of increasingly sophisticated legal argumentation made Ibn Idris’s critique of Tusi more consequential.

Aun Hasan Ali joined the Department of Religious Studies in 2015. He works on the Islamic tradition. Ali studied Religion and Philosophy at Rutgers University, receiving his BA in 2003. That same year he travelled to Yemen to continue studying Arabic. He earned an MA in Islamic Studies from McGill University in 2007, and will receive his PhD in Islamic Studies from McGill University in 2015. Ali's research focuses on the intellectual history of Shi'ism, including both the pre-modern and modern periods. In particular, he is interested in studying Shi'ism through the lens of the concept of tradition and social network theory. Ali is also interested in Shi'i law and legal theory, especially the interplay between shariah and legislation. His current project examines intellectual life in the city of Hillah in southern Iraq in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries CE. Ali is also preparing the final draft of an article in which he examines the relationship between Sunnism and Shi'ism through the lens of the issue of documentary evidence in Islamic law. His recent publications include a translation of a Persian chapter about the Qajar philosopher Abu'l-Hasan Jilveh in Philosophical traditions in Qajar Iran, set to be published by Brill in 2015, and two articles on Shi'i legal theory, classical and modern, in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Law.