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The Sigur Center for Asian Studies strives to increase the quality and broaden the scope of scholarly research and publication on Asia, promote US-Asian scholarly interaction, and educate a new generation of students, scholars, and policymakers.

Thanks to an active program of publishing, teaching, public events, and policy engagement, the Sigur Center offers the largest Asian Studies program in metro DC, with more than 60 affiliated faculty. Together with GWIKS, Sigur supports the East Asia National Resource Center, a Title VI Center of academic excellence. Sigur also administers the prestigious Foreign Language and Area Studies awards, which funds GW students to intensively study Japanese, Korean, or Chinese.

Spotlight

A picture of Eric Schluessel, smiling in glasses and lookin gat the camera

Eric Schluessel

Associate Professor of History and International Affairs

Eric Schluessel is a social historian of China and Central Asia, and his work focuses on Xinjiang (East Turkestan) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Land of Strangers, his first monograph, uses local archival and manuscript sources in Chinese and Chaghatay Turkic to explore the ramifications of a project undertaken in the last decades of the Qing empire to transform Xinjiang’s Turkic-speaking Muslims into Chinese-speaking Confucians.

Schluessel is currently pursuing two research projects: Saints and Sojourners explores the economic history of the Uyghur region from the 1750s through the 1950s as seen from below, through the records of merchants, farmers, and managers of pious endowments. It ties changes at the village level to shifts in the global economy in places as far away as Manchester and Tianjin. Exiled Gods delves into Han Chinese settler culture and religion to illuminate the history of a diasporic community of demobilized soldiers and their descendants that spanned the Qing empire.

Thanks to grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies, Schluessel is also completing a translation and critical edition of the Tārīkh-i Ḥamīdī of Mullah Mūsa Sayrāmī, which is an important Chaghatay-language chronicle of nineteenth-century Xinjiang.

Schluessel previously taught at the University of Montana in Missoula and spent the 2018–2019 academic year as a Mellon Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ.

News & Announcements

Announcements

 

  • We are thrilled to announce that Dr. Deepa Ollapally, Research Professor of International Relations and Director of the Rising Powers Initiative, has published an insightful op-ed on NewsLaundry titled “Harris or Trump: What difference does it make to India?” This timely piece examines the convergence in US foreign policy across party lines, driven by the “Trumpification” of American politics, and what it could mean for US-India relations. Read her full analysis on key issues, from trade tensions to strategic partnerships in defense and technology, here

  • We are excited to share that Professor Robert Sutter, a leading expert on US-China relations, recently provided critical insights in an interview with Josh Rultenberg on Gray DC! Prof. Sutter discussed the strategic challenges that both candidates, Harris and Trump, may face in handling China, underscoring the need for a steady, strategic approach in this high-stakes competition. Catch his expert analysis on what’s needed to address this critical issue for America’s future. Read the full interview here

6/5/24 Ashli Boxley Took the Road Less Taken

On June 5th, 2024, Inaugural David Gitter Fellow Ashli Boxley was profiled for Elliott 360 in “Ashli Boxley Took the Road Less Taken“. Ashli Boxley Took the Road Less Taken Originally published in Elliott 360 | 05 June 2024 Ashli...

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Sigur Center for Asian Studies

1957 E St. NW, Suite 503

Washington, DC 20052

+1 (202) 994-5886 | gsigur@gwu.edu

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