SAGSC: South Asia Graduate Student Conference

The Eighth South Asia Graduate Student Conference Presents:

The Limits of South Asia

March 3-4, 2011

University of Chicago

Thursday, March 3rd: Swift Hall, Common Room

9:30 am  –  Breakfast
9:45 am  –  Opening Remarks & Acknowledgments

10:00 am - The Limits of the Nation-State
Chair: John D. Kelly, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago

The Education Complex: Imperial Anxieties and the Case of Five Tibetans in England, 1913-1914
Kyle Gardner, University of Chicago

Performing Assam: Bihu as a ‘national’ expression of communities across the globe
Rehanna Kheshgi, University of Chicago

The Swat Conflict, 2007-09: some notes on history, (un)civil society and the state
Maira Hayat, University of Chicago

11:30 am – Break

11:40 am –  Global Drifts: In Through Out-Sources
Chair: Kaushik Sunder Rajan, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago

Mapping the Global Digital Economy: Young Women and the Rural BPO
Gowri Vijayakumar, University of California – Berkeley

South Asian or Muslim? Islamic Consumption in Urban Lahore, Pakistan
Ammara Maqsood, Oxford University

12:45 pm – Lunch

2:15 pm - Language, Ideology & (Meta)Pragmatic Limits
Chair: Constantine Nakassis, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago

The Making of the “Real” Far Western Nepal
Retika Rajbhandari, University of Chicago

Translation as a Translinguistic Phenomenon: The Case of Tibetan Translations from Sanskrit
Erin Epperson, University of Chicago

Aamchi Bihar, Hamaar Bambai: Setting the Limits of Bhojpuri Regional Identity in Mumbai
Kathryn Hardy, University of Pennsylvania

3:45 pm – Break

4:00 pm  - Keynote Address
(Co-Sponsored by the Theory & Practice in South Asia Workshop, Council for Advanced Studies, University of Chicago)
Chair & Introduction: Dipesh Chakrabarty, Departments of History and South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago

The Limits of Caste: From Iberian Category to Indic Essence
Sumit Guha, Professor of History, Rutgers University

5:30 pm – Drinks and Reception
6:30 pm – Conference Dinner

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Friday, March 4th: Swift Hall, Common Room

8:30 am  –  Breakfast

9:00 am – The Ends of Politics
Chair: Kathleen Morrison, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago

Building Imperial Spaces: Architectural Patronage in Ajmer and the Internal Limits of the Mughal Empire
Elizabeth Thelen, University of California – Berkeley

Lost in the Red Light Labyrinth: Reflections on Sonagachi and the Politics of Intervention
Greg Goodman, University of Chicago

Poisoned Futures: Pesticide Usage, Farmer Suicides and the Limits of South Asia
Hayden Kantor, Cornell University

10:30 am – Break

10:40 am - (En)Gendering Texts
Chair: Rochona Majumdar, Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago

Feeling Rules: Probing the Theoretical Boundaries of South Asia
Monika Freier, Max Planck Institute – Berlin

Prostitute, Genealogy, History: The Science of Aberration in Colonial India
Durba Mitra, Emory University

Women, Partition and Nationalism: The violence, silence and incomplete identities explored through Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India
Namrata Amin, The New School for Social Research

12:00 pm – Lunch (Foster Hall, Room 103)

1:40 pm - Living Other-Wise: Crisis, Critique & Reinterpretation
Chair: Tarini Bedi, Committee on Southern Asian Studies, University of Chicago

Rethinking Krishna: Bhaktivinoda’s hermeneutical strategies in the context of 19th century attitudes towards Krishna’s eroticism
Abhishek Ghosh, University of Chicago

On the Questions of Consciousness, Being, Becoming and Belonging in Premchand’s ‘Kafan’
Karin Shankar, University of California – Berkeley

An Archaeology of Identity: Defining the Muslim in British Indian Politics
Muhammad Ali Nasir, University of Karachi, Pakistan

3:00 pm – Break

3:10 pm - The Horizon of Affect: Sufi Sentiments
Chair: Thibaut d’Hubert, Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago

Love in the Master-Disciple Relationship: A Contested Concept in 18^th and 19^th Century South Asia
Mohammad Sajjad, Max Planck Institute – Berlin

The Majẕūb of Deoband: Intoxication and Devotion in the Poetry of Khvājah ʿAzīz al-Ḥasan Ghōrī Majẕūb (1884-1944)
Fauzi Dossul, Columbia University

Limits of the Heart, Limits of the Nation: Emotions and Community in Khwaja Hasan Nizami’s da ’i-e Islam and his tabligh movement
Maritta Schleyer, Max Planck Institute – Berlin

4:40 pm – Break

4:50 pm – Keynote Address
(Co-Sponsored by the Semiotics Workshop, Council for Advanced Studies, University of Chicago)
Chair & Introduction: Sascha Ebeling, Department of South Asian Languages and Civillizations, University of Chicago
Discussant: Victor D’Avella, University of Chicago
Discussant: Shunsuke Nozawa, University of Chicago

The Lost Ur
E. Valentine Daniel, Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University

6:20 pm – Closing Comments