Tomorrow is the Africa-Asia: A New Axis of Knowledge conference here at the University of Ghana. While large Asian countries such as China, Japan, and India are well represented, Central Asia is not. Other than my panel which includes my paper dealing with Kyrgyzstan and another one dealing with Kazakhstan there is only one other paper at the conference dealing with Central Asia. This is symptomatic of the declining scholarly interest in the region internationally in recent years.
A while back I offered to teach a course at Oxy on Central Asia in the Asian Studies Department, and was told Central Asia was not part of Asia. They subsequently changed their name to the East Asian Studies Department.
ReplyDeleteOf course it is part of Asia. East Asian Studies would also exclude South Asian countries like India. Here many people think China is the only country in Asia.
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