Join us for the fourth and concluding seminar in the Fall 2025 From Area Studies to Global Studies series, part of the Ph.D. in Global Studies curriculum at Global Studies University (GSU): “Imagining Asia,” presented by Iftikhar Dadi, Professor in the Department of History of Art and Visual Studies at Cornell University, USA.
Date & Time: Thursday, December 11, 2025, 12:30 – 2:30 PM GST
Location: Auditorium, The Africa Institute, GSU (location map)
The session is free and open to the public.
This seminar examines the historical and conceptual framing of “Asia” from the early twentieth century to the present. Encompassing an extraordinarily diverse range of geographies, peoples, societies, and cultures, and home to more than half of the world’s population, Asia resists overarching generalizations. Yet, despite this complexity, the term retains institutional legitimacy and continues to carry meanings that are often shaped by positionality. While “Asia” has frequently been articulated from East and Southeast Asian vantage points, it remains comparatively underdeveloped when examined from Central or West Asian perspectives. Accordingly, this talk will also consider what the idea of Asia might look like when viewed from a Western Asian location.
Iftikhar Dadi is John H. Burris Professor and Chair of Cornell University’s Department of History of Art. He researches modern and contemporary art from a transnational perspective, with an emphasis on methodology and intellectual history, and a focus on South and West Asia. Another research interest examines film and popular cultures of South Asia. He has authored Lahore Cinema Between Realism and Fable (2022), Modernism and the Art of Muslim South Asia (2010) and edited The Lahore Biennale 01 Reader (2022) and Anwar Jalal Shemza (2015). He has co-edited the Lahore Biennale 02 Reader (2024); Art and Architecture of Migration and Discrimination: Turkey, Pakistan, and Their European Diasporas (2023); Lines of Control: Partition as a Productive Space (2012); and Unpacking Europe: Towards a Critical Reading (2001). Co-curated exhibitions include Pop South Asia: Artistic Explorations in the Popular (2022–23) and Lines of Control: Partition as a Productive Space (2012–13). As an artist, Iftikhar Dadi collaborates with Elizabeth Dadi to make work that explores questions of identity and borders, and the capacities of the informal urban realm in the Global South.
Dale Luis Menezes, Assistant Professor of History at The Asia Institute, Global Studies University, Sharjah, is a historian of early modern South Asia and the Indian Ocean world, focusing on Goa and the Iberian presence in Asia. He holds a Ph.D. in History from Georgetown University. His research examines how agrarian communities, especially coconut and rice cultivators, shaped Indian Ocean empires from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries. His doctoral thesis, Four Hundred Monsoons of Coconuts and Rice, highlights the role of staple crops and laboring groups in empire-making. Menezes works across imperial and non-imperial histories, exploring local governance, transoceanic commerce, and political thought in regional languages. He contributes to the European Research Council project India’s Politics in its Vernacular and is fluent in Konkani, Portuguese, Dutch, Gujarati, Marathi, Hindi, and Afrikaans.
The seminar will be in English.
Join us for the fourth and concluding seminar in the Fall 2025 From Area Studies to Global Studies series, part of the Ph.D. in Global Studies curriculum at Global Studies University (GSU): “Imagining Asia,” presented by Iftikhar Dadi, Professor in the Department of History of Art and Visual Studies at Cornell University, USA.
Join us for the fourth and concluding seminar in the Fall 2025 From Area Studies to Global Studies series, part of the Ph.D. in Global Studies curriculum at Global Studies University (GSU): “Imagining Asia,” presented by Iftikhar Dadi, Professor in the Department of History of Art and Visual Studies at Cornell University, USA.
Date & Time: Thursday, December 11, 2025, 12:30 – 2:30 PM GST
Location: Auditorium, The Africa Institute, GSU (location map)
The session is free and open to the public.
This seminar examines the historical and conceptual framing of “Asia” from the early twentieth century to the present. Encompassing an extraordinarily diverse range of geographies, peoples, societies, and cultures, and home to more than half of the world’s population, Asia resists overarching generalizations. Yet, despite this complexity, the term retains institutional legitimacy and continues to carry meanings that are often shaped by positionality. While “Asia” has frequently been articulated from East and Southeast Asian vantage points, it remains comparatively underdeveloped when examined from Central or West Asian perspectives. Accordingly, this talk will also consider what the idea of Asia might look like when viewed from a Western Asian location.
Iftikhar Dadi is John H. Burris Professor and Chair of Cornell University’s Department of History of Art. He researches modern and contemporary art from a transnational perspective, with an emphasis on methodology and intellectual history, and a focus on South and West Asia. Another research interest examines film and popular cultures of South Asia. He has authored Lahore Cinema Between Realism and Fable (2022), Modernism and the Art of Muslim South Asia (2010) and edited The Lahore Biennale 01 Reader (2022) and Anwar Jalal Shemza (2015). He has co-edited the Lahore Biennale 02 Reader (2024); Art and Architecture of Migration and Discrimination: Turkey, Pakistan, and Their European Diasporas (2023); Lines of Control: Partition as a Productive Space (2012); and Unpacking Europe: Towards a Critical Reading (2001). Co-curated exhibitions include Pop South Asia: Artistic Explorations in the Popular (2022–23) and Lines of Control: Partition as a Productive Space (2012–13). As an artist, Iftikhar Dadi collaborates with Elizabeth Dadi to make work that explores questions of identity and borders, and the capacities of the informal urban realm in the Global South.
Dale Luis Menezes, Assistant Professor of History at The Asia Institute, Global Studies University, Sharjah, is a historian of early modern South Asia and the Indian Ocean world, focusing on Goa and the Iberian presence in Asia. He holds a Ph.D. in History from Georgetown University. His research examines how agrarian communities, especially coconut and rice cultivators, shaped Indian Ocean empires from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries. His doctoral thesis, Four Hundred Monsoons of Coconuts and Rice, highlights the role of staple crops and laboring groups in empire-making. Menezes works across imperial and non-imperial histories, exploring local governance, transoceanic commerce, and political thought in regional languages. He contributes to the European Research Council project India’s Politics in its Vernacular and is fluent in Konkani, Portuguese, Dutch, Gujarati, Marathi, Hindi, and Afrikaans.
The seminar will be in English.
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