CAIS Public Lecture Series | (Neo-)Paganism in the Caucasus: The Ossetes Between Russian Orthodoxy and Salafi Islam
Lecture/seminar
Linguistic and cultural descendants of the ancient Scythians, the Ossetes of the central Caucasus have preserved numerous vestiges of archaic Iranian rituals and beliefs. In recent years their distinctive ancestral practices have come under fire from Christian and Muslim authorities alike who…
CAIS Public Lecture Series | Tajik Regionalism and the Failure to Build a National Identity
Lecture/seminar
Culturally and economically decapitated by the Bolsheviks more than a century ago, Tajiks today have been left with the poorest of all the former Soviet republics. Richard Foltz, author of A History of the Tajiks: Iranians of the East, discusses how neither generations of nationalist intellectuals…
A Master Class and Workshop with CAIS HDR Students and ECRs on Encouraging Interdisciplinarity: Reality or Lip-Service?
Workshop
For decades now "interdisciplinarity" has been a catchword in Western academia. University administrators have ostensibly encouraged scholars to interact with colleagues across disciplines. But has this really played out in practice, or has it remained mostly a matter of lip service? Historian…