SAGSC: South Asia Graduate Student Conference

The Seventh South Asia Graduate Student Conference

April 16-17, 2010

University of Chicago

Friday, April 16: Classics 110

08:30    Breakfast
09:00    Opening Remarks

09:10  Literary Cultures in Colonial India and Beyond
Chair: Ulrike Stark, South Asia Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago

Biography of a Language: Malayalam in the Kēraḷapāṇinīyam(s) of A. R. Rajaraja Varma
Ellen Ambrosone, University of Chicago

Chandrika Prasad Jigyasu and Bhikkhu Bodhananda:  Buddhism and the Evolution of the Dalit Public Sphere
John Stavrellis, University of Wisconsin-Madison

From the Mehfil to the Printed Word: Public Debate and Discourse in late Colonial India
C. Ryan Perkins, University of Pennsylvania

10:30    Break

10:40  Sanskrit Literature: History and Criticism
Chair: Gary Tubb, South Asia Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago

Layers of Duality in the Caitanyacandrodaya of Kavikarnapura
Ashley Lyons, University of Chicago

On the Purity of Poetry
Victor B. D’Avella, University of Chicago

King Bhoja of Dhāra and his Court: As Described in Ballāla’s Bhojaprabandha
Katarzyna Pażucha, University of Chicago

12:00    Lunch

1:30   Political Movements and Pakistan
Chair: Rajeev Kinra, History, Northwestern University

Strong Party, Weak Party – the Institutionalization of the All-India Muslim League
Erum Haider, University of Chicago

The Vicissitudes of Pakistan’s New Left: Expressions of “Self-Defeats” in the 1960s Politics
Atiya Khan, University of Chicago

This is the Voice of Swat Valley: Radio, Sovereignty, Subjectivity
Mehreen Zahra-Malik, University of Wisconsin-Madison

2:50    Break

3:00   Empire and Alterity
Chair: Poornima Paidipaty, Harper-Schmidt Fellow, University of Chicago

The Missing ‘Half’: ‘Caste’, ‘Casta’ and Hybrid Miscegenation Discourses in 1820’s British India
Amanda Hamilton, University of Chicago

Outlawing Religion: Contesting Religion, Labor, and the Politics of Classification in 19th Century Trinidad
Alex Rocklin, University of Chicago

Moral Economies of the Marvelous: Rain, Value and the Marwari Stranger Merchant
Sean Dowdy, University of Chicago

4:45  Alumni Address:

Every Secret Thing? Racial Politics in Ansuyah R. Singh’s Behold the Earth Mourns (1960)
Antoinette Burton, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

6:30    Dinner

SATURDAY APRIL 17: ROSENWALD,  405.

09:30  Genres of History: Inscriptions
Chair: Sascha Ebeling, South Asian Languages & Civilizations, University of Chicago

The Political Cultures of the Nadia Raj and Malla Dynasty in 17th Century Bengal
Samuel Wright, University of Chicago

A Community in Transition: Tamil Merchants in China
Risha Lee, Columbia University

10:30    Break

10:35    Genres of History: Memoirs
Chair: Muzaffar Alam, South Asian Languages & Civilizations, University of Chicago

Individuation in Early Modern Travelogues
Ishan Chakrabarti, University of Texas at Austin

The Political-Minded Sufi in the Realm of the Gujarat Sultans: A reading of Ahmad Khattu’s malfuzāt
Jyoti Gulati, University of California, Los Angeles

11:35    Break

11:40    Governance and Democracy
Dipesh Chakrabarty, History, University of Chicago

A Nobel Laureate’s Letters and Kasu Mia’s Citizenship: Documents and democracy in contemporary Bangladesh
Nusrat Chowdhury, University of Chicago

Elected local bodies, institutional change and the politics of democracy in western India
Dolly Daftary, Washington University in St. Louis

12:40    Lunch

1:30 Sources and Institutions of Law
Chair: Rochona Majumdar, South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago

Inclusive Constitutional Comparison
Madhav Khosla, Yale University

Nationalist Discourses and Religious Identities in the Judicial Field in Pakistan
Sadia Saeed, University of Michigan

Barred from the Bench: the Under-representation of Women in the Indian Higher Judiciary
Arghya Sengupta, University of Oxford
Sanhita Ambast, Tufts University

2:50    Break

3:00  India’s Many Margins: Politics of land, labor, and religion
Chair: John Kelly, Anthropology, University of Chicago

Dalit Christianity, Caste and Structurally Imposed Marginality: A Sociological Study of Lutheran Church in Contemporary South India
Ashok Kumar, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay

Politics of Land Ownership and Customary Practices in Contemporary North East India:  Issues and Challenges Confronting the Landless Among the Naga Tribe
A. Wati Walling, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay

Divergent pathways of belonging: Indigenism and class in a Paniya colony
Luisa Steur, Central European University

4:20    Break

4:30 Keynote Address:

Situating the Subaltern in South Asian Medical History
David Hardiman, History, University of Warwick