About CASI

ILLUMINATING THE HUMANITIES IN CENTRAL ASIA

The Central Asian Studies Institute is committed to highlighting innovative research on the humanities in a field that is dominated by policy and political science. It is one of the only centers devoted to the region with a sustained emphasis on literature, art, and history. Few institutes in the US or Europe share its singular dedication to the humanities. CASI’s signature instrument in this effort is its History and Literature Workshop, a forum first established in 2014 to help build literature as a legitimate field in Central Asian scholarship. CASI is also involved in organizing research on a range of humanities topics. It hosts workshops on global borderlands, Eurasian epics, Central Asian cinema, and vernacular cultures in addition to overseeing research on the complex processes of naming in Central Asia.