Linguistic Histories in Asia and the Pacific

This course explores the human past – both recent and distant – of the Asia-Pacific region through a transdisciplinary lens. The Asia-Pacific is renowned for its incredible cultural, social and linguistic diversity, and this course explores the processes of continuity and transformation over time that have shaped today’s diversity. How are contemporary languages, cultures and societies windows onto past lives? Does evidence from historical linguistics, archaeology, population genetics, history, anthropology, and oral traditions tell similar or different stories about how people lived in the past? How are multiple perspectives, knowledges and disciplines brought together to investigate ‘big picture’ questions of the human past? These questions are explored through case studies from across Asia and the Pacific, such as the social and technological drivers of the expansions of large language families like Austronesian, Sino-Tibetan and Austroasiatic, the linguistic, social and cultural identities and interactions that shaped the settlement of the New Guinea and the Pacific, the social and political networks underpinning connections across South Asia and the Wallacea region. These models and narratives are key to understanding the Asia-Pacific past, and the dynamics of language and society across time and space are essential to understanding the contemporary Asia-Pacific world.