SAGSC: South Asia Graduate Student Conference

New Perspectives in South Asia Research

South Asia Graduate Student Conference V

April 11^th and 12^th, 2008

University of Chicago

Friday, April 11^th, 2008: Swift Hall, Common Room

830-900: Light Breakfast

900-1030: Querying the Canon: Classical Texts and their Afterlives
Chair: Professor Steven Collins, South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago

Theories of Vision in Ancient India
Sonam Kachru, Divinity School, University of Chicago

Intention (Cetanā), Memory and Moral Formation in the Karma Chapter of Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośabhāṣya
Karin L. Meyers, Divinity School, University of Chicago

Problems of Intertextuality in the Śālistambha Sūtra
Erin H. Epperson, Divinity School, University of Chicago

1030-1045: Break

1045-1215: Colonial Disciplines: Nutrition, Labour and the Military
Chair: Professor Rochona Majumdar, South Asian Languages and Civilizations, History, University of Chicago

Colonial modernity and the rhetoric of ‘Nutrition’ in Bengal
Utsa Ray, History, Pennsylvania State University

Tea Plantation and Labour Conditions in Assam: Literary Representations, Public Debates and Colonial Control in late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth century
Arnab Dey, South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago

Two mutinies: Discipline in the English East India Company Army
Aniruddha Bose, History, Boston College

1215-130: Lunch for conference participants in Foster 103

130-300: Ethnographies of the Indian State and its Subjects
Chair: Professor John Kelly, Anthropology, University of Chicago

Anxious Belongings: Phenomenological Exceptions and the Rule of Nation.
Townsend Middleton, Anthropology, Cornell University

Subalterns of the State: Police Discipline as ‘Exploitation’ of a ‘Caste’
Beatrice Jauregui, Anthropology, University of Chicago

(Un)Becoming Adivasi:Post-colonial Resistance and the Transformative Subaltern
Vikramaditya Thakur, Anthropology, Yale University

300-330: Break

330-430: Arresting Developments: the State and its’ Political Prisoners
Prison Talk
Manan Ahmed, South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago

Notes on Binayak Sen
Dwaipayan Sen, History, University of Chicago

430-600: Global Developments in South Asian Research (Swift Hall, Room 106)
Chair: Professor William T.S. Mazzarella, Anthropology, University of Chicago

A round-table panel discussion with Professor David Arnold (History, University of Warwick), Professor Robin Jeffrey (Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University), and Professor Sudipta Kaviraj (Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University)

600-800: Drinks and Dinner (Swift Hall, Common Room)

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Saturday, April 12th, 2008: Swift Hall, Common Room

830-900: Light Breakfast

900-1030: The Aesthetics of Consumption
Chair: Professor Karin Zitzewitz, Harper and Schmitt Fellow, Social Sciences, University of Chicago

Aestheticizing the Commonplace: Mundane Objects from India and their New Lives in the Visual Arts
Subhashini Kaligotla, Art History, Columbia University

Figuring Addiction in the Colonial Context: Images of Opium Use in British India
Hope Marie Childers, Art History, UCLA

Representations of women’s bodies a sites of empowered feminism in Nalini Malani’s Recent Works 2007 and Nilima Sheikh’s Akka Mahadevi Series, 2001-02
Srimoyee Mitra, Art History, York University

1030-1045: Break

1045-1215: South Asia and the World: Transnational Histories
Chair: Professor Ralph Austen, History, University of Chicago

The Birth of a Noble Tea Country: On the geography of colonial modernity, free trade and the origins of Indian tea
Andy Liu, International and Global History, Columbia University

Peripheral Eyes: Brazil and India, 1947-1961
Ananya Chakravarti, History, University of Chicago

Looking East: Nation and Politics across the Indian Ocean, from Colonial Kenya to India
Sana Aiyar, History, Harvard University

1215-130: Lunch for conference participants in Foster 103

130-300: The Rise, Decline and Fall of the British Empire: 18^th, 19^th, and 20^th Centuries
Chair: Professor Dipesh Chakrabarty, History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago

The Historical Constitution of Un-British Rule in India: Anti-Liberal Imperialism and the Early Formation of the Company State in Bengal
James Vaughn, History, University of Chicago

Of ‘Quietism’ and Quietude: Religion and Politics in Nineteenth Century Bengal
Rajarshi Ghose, South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago

Constitutional Engagement and Popular Politics: The Indian National Congress 1937-39
Arvind Elangovan, History, University of Chicago

300-330: Break

330-500: Keynote Address:

Marxism in Translation: critical reflections on radical thought in India.
Professor Sudipta Kaviraj, Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University