In conjunction with the inauguration of a new curriculum in climate & society in Asia during the 2023-24 academic year, the Center for Asian Studies will be exploring the theme of water in Asia. There are many dimensions to water, as a liquid, a basis of all living organisms, a biotic infrastructure for life, a material around which complex social relations of power swirl, and a counterpoint to conceptions that area studies are based on. With this theme, CAS seeks to gather together divergent interests in ‘blue humanities’, ‘wet ontologies’, environmental justice movements associated with water, climate change induced experiences of flood and drought, and social fluidities of all sorts – from labor migrant streams to ‘be like water’ protest movements – all in the spatial and temporal contexts of Asian places. We are particularly interested in how the social effects of anthropogenic climate change are experienced through human relations with water.