For what it's worth, in Account Settings > AI Settings you can opt out of AI use of your Academia.edu uploads

Rioting and arson have engulfed Kathmandu in the wake of the govt's aborted attempt to censor or block access to social media. These brave souls sat out to protect Nepal's cultural heritage.

Provincialising Dharma: Studies on Legal Issues in the Himalaya, a collection of essays exploring the Himalayan regional dimensions of dharma, historically & today, is out: www.asiainstitutetorino.it/cis/CIS_10.pdf including my piece, "Sacred Law as a Device of State-Building in Gorkhali Nepal."

Posted a forthcoming study of how the Gorkha kings deployed Hindu sacred law (dharma) in 18th- & early 19th-c. Nepal to integrate ethnic groups as castes within a multiethnic kingdom — in the shadow of late Mughal/early Company-raj India.
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Follow @stlubin.bsky.social for visionary images of how ecosystems and human systems overlap. s3.amazonaws.com/images.icomp...

Works from the series "After Audubon" and "Watershed" (laurestevenslubin.com/series/after...) are on view at The Branch Museum in Richmond, Va. for the next three months as part of the exhibition "Re-Think Landscape Design": branchmuseum.org/re-think-lan...

Laure Stevens-Lubin's redesigned website is live, exploring ecosystems and human-systems: laurestevenslubin.com

The earliest known example of a grant recorded on copper plates is the Patagandigudem charter (in this case to a Buddhist monastery) issued by the Śālaṅkāyana king Siri-Ehavalacāntamūlavamma ca. 250–300 CE. 1/2 hisoma.huma-num.fr/exist/apps/E... #ancientindia #prakrit #epigraphy #diplomatics

I can't be the only one who finds the @nytimes.com's "The Interview" slo-mo b/w images utterly creepy and pretentious in a dystopian way. The latest:

"Pūrṇavarman's Prints: Environment and Inscription in Early West Java" by Liz Cecil just pubd OA in a special issue of Textual Cultures on material texts: in 5/6 c. W Java, Sanskrit inscriptions were "a new power technology in the service of political spectacle. scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/ind...

"Ashoka: Portrait of a Philosopher King," by Patrick Olivelle, is state-of-the-art history and a great read too -- and named one of the "Best Books of 2024" by The New Yorker. www.newyorker.com/best-books-2... #ancient #india #empire #epigraphy #skystorians #history

Here's the TOC of The Cambridge Comparative History of Ancient Law (ed. Humfress, Ibbetson & Olivelle), out this fall. A herculean labor, with hard thinking about the comparative objective. www.cambridge.org/core/books/c... @legalhistoryblog.bsky.social @danernst.bsky.social @kmtani.bsky.social

Jim Mallinson (Boden Prof. of #Sanskrit, Oxford) interviewed by Kshitij Jain on his edition & translation of the Dattātreyayogaśāstra -- research that recovers the obscure history of #hatha #yoga. Podcast here: newbooksnetwork.com/the-dattatre...

Newly discovered evidence of an alphabetic script from 2400 BCE, being presented today at the ASOR meeting. phys.org/news/2024-11...

Premodern South & Southeast Asian grant charters included clauses meant to secure their legal force. My contrib to the Paris DHARMA Project workshop in Sept (dharma.hypotheses.org/6066) examined Javanese literary allusions to their aims and effects.

Laure Stevens-Lubin's new series, "After Audubon: Abiding in the Anthropocene" bears witness to avian efforts to make a home in denatured environments tinyurl.com/afteraudubon #audubon #birds #environment #arts #artistonX #anthropocene #speciesunderthreat

Looking forward to my talk at U.Mich. this month, "The Exemption that Proves the Rule: Reading Law Between the Lines of Medieval South Asian Foundation Charters," in honor of the superb historian Tom Trautmann. ii.umich.edu/csas/news-ev... #legalhistory #ancientlaw #lawandreligion #southasianhistory

The pleasure of seeing proofs of my contributions to a collaborative project that began 15 years ago! The Cambridge Comparative History of Ancient Law (ed. Humfress, Ibbetson & Olivelle). This 70-page chapter plus my bits in chapters on Property, Writing and Law, and Crime. Won't be long now!