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2013-2014 Seminar Series, co-sponsored by the UCLA Program on Central Asia and the Center for Near Eastern StudiesToo often the locus of world history is conceived as the oceanic littoral, the maritime borderland where “Asia met Europe.” By instead looking inland to the terrestrial frontiers of Eurasia’s empires, this public seminar series examines the mutual impact that the peoples and polities of Central Asia and the great empires of Eurasia had on each other. Whether in terms of knowledge production, economic exchange, literary and artistic practice, identity formation, religious customs or political culture, imperial interactions with Central Asian peoples created symbiotic (and at times parasitic) motors of historical development that radiated from the landlocked core of Eurasia.Through presentations by specialists on early modern and modern Chinese, Middle Eastern, Russian and Indian empires, the seminar series repositions peoples, environments and practices from the interior of the Eurasian landmass as active participants in empire. In turn, the seminar series aims to shift conceptions of Central Asia from the backlands of empire into key spaces for transaction and transformation in world history.Co-organized by Nile Green, Director of the Program on Central Asia, and Gabi Piterberg, Director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies.Series Schedule:October 15, 2013Looking Inland: From the Coast to the Steppe in Eurasian HistoryInaugural ForumClick to Watch Youtube VideoOctober 24, 2013The World in the Year 1000: The View from BeijingValerie Hansen, Yale UniversityNovember 6, 2013The Ottoman Garden of Eight Paradises: Idris Bitlisi's Persian HistoryAli Anooshahr, UC DavisJanuary 28, 2014Xinjiang in Central Asian and World HistoryJames Millward, Georgetown UniversityClick for PodcastFebruary 11, 2014Ottoman-Safavid Frontiers, Real and ImaginedKaya Sahin, Indiana UniversityFebruary 24, 2014Chinese Islam, Islam in China: Four Centuries of a Eurasian Religious and Intellectual DilemmaJonathan Lipman, Mt. Holyoke CollegeMarch 3, 2014Discovering Empire in ChinaMark Elliott, Harvard UniversityApril 3, 2014Talab, Rihla, Ghaza: How Central Asian Sufis Rediscovered India and ChinaAlexandre Papas, CNRS, ParisApril 7, 2014Title TBDCigdem Kafesciouglu, Boğaziçi University, IstanbulApril 17, 2014The Empire of the Steppe:  Russia's Colonial Experience on the Eurasian FrontiersMichael Khodarkovsky, Loyola University, ChicagoMay 06, 2014Central Asia Today: Empire and Reimaging the PastMartha Brill Olcott, Colgate UniversityMay 20, 2014Blessed Images, Troubling Images: Modernity and the Visual Culture of the Muslims of Late Imperial RussiaAzade-Ayse Rorlich, USCProgram on Central Asia