Welcome Back from Kalyanakrishnan Sivaramakrishnan, Chair, South Asian Studies Council

Welcome Back from Kalyanakrishnan Sivaramakrishnan
Chair, South Asian Studies Council

Hello everyone, Happy New Year, and welcome back!

We hope you have all had restful and productive winter holidays and are as excited about the new term as we are! We have a lot of interesting talks, discussions, performances, and special events planned for this year that we�re sure you will enjoy. Please join us for as many as possible and visit our website for regular updates. To sign up and receive regular notification of events please write to south.asia@yale.edu.

The tradition of weekly South Asian Studies Colloquia continues on Wednesdays at 4:30 pm in Luce Hall. Some of the featured speakers include environmental historian of Assam, Arupjyoti Saikia; Ruby Lal a historian of women in Mughal times; Nayanjot Lahiri a scholar of Ancient India from Delhi University, who will speak on the archaeology of Partition; Zoya Hasan, a political scientist from Jawaharlal Nehru University, India; distinguished scholar and columnist, Ramachandra Guha; and New India Foundation Fellow, Vasanthi Sreenivasan from University of Hyderabad. The colloquium series will conclude with a panel discussion on women and new media in India, which we are co-organizing with Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Among local talent the colloquium will feature Inderpal Grewal, Chair WGSS, and our own postdocs. Do come and hear Ian Desai, Gijs Kruijtzer, and Mrinalini Rajagopalan speak about their current research. For more information on these colloquia, and other events and resources, please visit the events page.

This term we will have several workshops and conferences, including the third annual Modern South Asia Workshop on April 9-10, 2011, featuring new research across the disciplines by early-career scholars and new PhDs from the US and Europe. Full details will shortly be on the website. We will have the second annual South Asian Languages and Literatures Workshop the following weekend, culminating in the fifth annual Hindi Debate. A week later we are pleased to co-sponsor a conference on Means and Ends: Rethinking Political Realism, organized by Council Member, Karuna Mantena, which will feature several visitors from India. Urban India: Historical Processes and Contemporary Experience is our annual International Conference. It will include inaugural and plenary sessions and panels on topics like urban utopias, livelihoods and informality, cities and public culture, urban infrastructure and land, desire and belonging in Indian cities, citizenship and urban governance, with papers by distinguished visitors from India and major research centers in the USA and Europe. Rakesh Mohan, Fellow Jackson Institute, and Professor in the School of Management, a leading expert on urbanization in India, and currently the Chair of the Government of India Infrastructure Commission, has kindly agreed to deliver the opening address at this conference. In May we will also host two workshops. The first, on interdisciplinary Himalayan research at Yale, will feature colleagues from all across campus in dialogue with visitors from Europe and the USA. The second, on Law and Social Inequality in India, will bring to campus a group of scholars who are working together on these issues across Yale, CNRS, Paris, and JNU, New Delhi as part of a four-year collaboration that began in 2009.

As usual we will have a South Asian Film Series, and musical and cultural events including those that will form part of South Asia Awareness Month, organized by the South Asia Society of Yale College. There is much more happening across the campus that is inspired by an interest in South Asia across the arts, humanities, social sciences, and contemporary affairs. Many of these events and fora are supported by the South Asian Studies Council in collaboration with other departments and programs or student organizations.

And let me also draw the attention of all students to a fine slate of language and non-language courses offered through South Asian Studies this term. You can find them on our web site and on the online catalog, and do come and talk to the DUS South Asian Studies Dr. Harry Blair, or the Director of South Asian Language Programs, Dr. Blake Wentworth, in their offices in the Council if you want to learn more about this exciting and important field of study.

Have a great start to the spring semester!