Open to the NYU Abu Dhabi community and by invitation.
21 November 2023
15.30 – 16.30
A4-008, The Reading Room
With George van Driem (University of Bern)

The tale of of tea, Camellia sinensis, spans thousands of years and cannot be told in an hour. This tea talk will therefore present a number of selected highlights from the history of tea. How did tea become a cultivated plant, and how did this cultigen reach China? How was tea subsequently transformed in China? What were some of the economic and environmental ramifications of tea on the history of China and of the world? The tea trade is responsible for paper money, the Opium Wars and the existence of Hong Kong. Tea was a decisive factor in theActs of Navigation, the Anglo-Dutch wars and the American war of independence. The economy of tea was crucial to the economy and the military defences of Tángand Sòng dynasty China and moulded the evolution of Chinese art and culture. The tea trade with the West played a role in sowing the seeds of the Tàipíng rebellion and so ultimately of the Chinese revolution led by Dr.Sun Yat-sen and the subsequent Communist rebellion led by Máo Zédōng. Amore thorough account is provided in the book The Tale of Tea.

Open to the NYU Abu Dhabi community and by invitation.
4th May 2022. 18.00 – 19.30.
The Reading Room, NYUAD Art Gallery (A4-008).

With Sabyn Javeri, Saba Karim Khan, and Huma Umar.

Does writing have a nationality? Are writers defined by geography, language, religion, gender and ethnicity alone, or are there other attributes that identify them? ‘Ways of Being’ – An Anthology of Pakistani Women’s Creative Non-Fiction looks at questions of ‘being’ and ‘belonging’. How does a writer relate to her context, whether at ‘home’ or ‘away’, and locate herself and her writing in it? How do they navigate the world around them and how do they resist becoming representatives of their ‘kind’?

Open to the NYU Abu Dhabi community and by invitation.
24th April 2023. 16.00 – 17.30.
The Reading Room, NYUAD Art Gallery (A4-008).

A book discussion with Rina Agarwala (Johns Hopkins University).

Discussants: Veda Narasimhan (Economics), Harshana Rambukwella (LitCW), and Anju Mary Paul (SRPP)

Book description:
A sweeping history of how India has used its poor and elite emigrants to further Indian development and how Indian emigrants have reacted, resisted, and re-shaped India’s development in response.

How can states and migrants themselves explain the causes and effects of global migration? The Migration-Development Regime introduces a novel analytical framework to help answer this question in India, the world’s largest emigrant exporter and the world’s largest remittance-receiving country. Drawing on an archival analysis of Indian government documents, an original data base of Indian migrants’ transnational organizations, and over 200 interviews with poor and elite Indian emigrants, recruiters, and government officials, this book exposes the vital role the Indian state (from the colonial era to the present day) has long played in forging and legitimizing class inequalities within India through the management of international emigration. It also exposes how poor and elite emigrants have differentially resisted and re-shaped state emigration practices over time. By taking a long and class-based view, this book recasts contemporary migration not simply as a problematic function of neoliberalism or as a development panacea for sending countries, but as a dynamic historical process that sending states and migrants have long used to shape local development. In doing so, it re-defines the primary problems of global migration, exposes the material and ideological impact that migration has on sending state development, and isolates what is truly novel about contemporary migration.