The Second Annual Yale Modern South Asia Workshop

The second annual Yale Modern South Asia Workshop, hosted by the South Asian Studies Council, will be held on April 10th and 11th in the MacMillan Center. The Workshop will feature the unpublished work of fifteen junior scholars who will engage in interdisciplinary conversations on South Asia. The Workshop is split into five sections: Art History, History/Politics, Documentary Films, Afghanistan/Pakistan, and Religion.

The workshop will begin with South Asian Studies Council Chair K. Sivaramakrishnan�s welcome address on Saturday morning. Then launch into an exploration of Art History, chaired by Tamara Sears, assistant professor of Art History here at Yale. Romita Ray, art history associate professor at Syracuse University, will lead the discussion. Professor Ray earned her Ph.D. from Yale. The discussants are Niharika Dinkar, assistant professor of Art History at Boise State University, Beth Citron, Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pennsylvania, and Ahalya Satkunaratnam lecturer in political science at Northeastern Illinois University. Dinkar will present a paper entitled Masculine Regeneration and the Attenuated Body in Swadeshi Art: Re-examining the Early Works of Nandalal Bose, 1905-1915. Citron will be presenting Khakhar’s “Pop” in the Public Sphere, 1970-1972, which broaches discussions of modernism, pop and comparisons with Western art. Satkunaratnam will present Women�s negotiations of ethnic and political representation in Bharata Natyam practice in Colombo Sri Lanka, a dance-ethnographic look at the ways in which female Sri Lankan dancers used their bodies as statement of nationalism within the context of war. Satkunaratnam earned her Ph.D in Critical Dance Studies from the Unveristy of California, Riverside in 2009.

Following will come a session on History/Politics, chaired by historian and Yale lecturer Marina Martin. The discussion will be lead by Anupama Rao, associate professor of South Asian History at Barnard College. Professor Rao�s work focuses on issues of gender and caste in South Asian history. This session will discuss papers by Aparajita Mukhopadhyay, a Ph.D. student of history in the School of African and Oriental Studies, University of London, Mallika Shakya, a postdoctoral fellow at GEH Department of International Development in Oxford, and Santosh Shankar, a Ph.D. candidate at Syracuse Univeristy. Mukhopadhyay�s paper is on railways and the differentiation and redefinition of space in Nineteenth Century India. Shakya�s paper is titled Understanding a Maoist movement through development politics: An ethnography of the readymade garment industry in Nepal. It will discuss the place and relations of Nepali Maoists with the wider Nepali public through exploration of the readymade garment industry and Maoist influence there. Shankar will present �The Conditions of a Problem�: The Indian Statutory Commission and the Government of India Act.

Saturday�s workshop will conclude with a session on documentary films. Ashish Chadha of Yale will serve as both chair and discussant. Chadha�s work crosses the disciplines of Anthropology, Film Studies and South Asian Studies. His research focuses on the intersection and relationship between science, state and bureaucracy in postcolonial India. He is also a practicing film maker whose films have been show in festivals throughout the world. Chadha will lead this discussion between Sushmita Banerji from the University of Iowa, Debashree Mukherjee of New York University, and Erin O�Donnell of East Stroudsberg University. Banerji will present Ghatak�s Cinema: Looking at Singularity as Resistance. Mukherjee Scripting the Lost Object: Bombay Cinema in the 1930s and 40s. O�Donnell�s paper is entitled The Exilic Sentiment and Journeying Impulse of “Nagarik” (�The Citizen,� 1953) and “Jukti Takko ar Gappo” (�An Argument, a Debate and a Story,� 1974).

Sunday will feature two sessions. The first will be on Afghanistan/Pakistan. Yale�s visiting professor, and leading Afghan anthropologist, Alessandro Monsutti, will serve as chair. Shafqat Hussain, assistant professor of anthropology at Trinity College, will be the discussant. Hussain�s work is based in South and Central Asia and he explores questions of interaction and influence between human societies and the environment. This session will feature papers by three Ph.D. candidates. Anila Daulatzai, from Johns Hopkins University Department of Anthropology, will present her paper on questions of how to define gender in Afghanistan since 2001. Nadia Hassan, Political Scientist NYU, will present her paper entitled Politics of Islamic Feminism: Feminist Possibilities Within Islamic Revivalism. And Boston University�s Anthropologist Andrea Chiovenda will discuss her paper Against all odds: customary law and its counterparts in the dispute resolution mechanisms of Pashtun areas of South-East Afghanistan.

The final session is on religion. Renowned Yale professor of Religious Studies, Phyllis Granoff will serve as the session chair. Granoff�s work spans contemporary Indian literature, the classical religions of India (Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism), to early medieval Indian law codes. The discussion leader will be Osmund Boperachchi, a lector here at Yale, whose work explores the evolution and history of Buddhism and Hinduism through utilizing the archaeological record. This part of the workshop will feature the papers of Varuni Bhatai, assistant professor of religious studies at NYU, Timothy Dobe assistant professor at Grinnell College, and Arkotong Longkumer, a lecturer from Edinburgh. Bhatia�s paper is entitled Images of Nabadvip: place, evidence, and inspiration in Chaitanya�s biography. Dobe will be speaking on Public Monks: Modern Sadhus, Pre-modern Models and Performance, exploring pre-modern and modern models of public and political asceticism in Northern Indian religion. Longkumer will explore the ways in which nationalism is driven by appropriations of truth and faith in his paper Religions, geopolitics and �invented traditions�: the emergence of nationalism amongst the Nagas in India.

The workshop will conclude with an overall discussion, drawing on all papers and disciplines discussed thus far. Professor Sivaramakrishnan will serve as chair. In order to attend the workshop, registration is required.