Yale University hosts the Third Association of Nepal and Himalayan Studies Conference
The third Association of Nepal and Himalayan Studies Conference was held at Yale University on 14 –16 March, 2014. The conference explored a range of ecological, social and political challenges facing a region that divides — and connects — the two great Asian superpowers, China and India. The conference attracted more than 200 people from across the world, not including participants from the Yale community. It was chaired and convened by Dr. Mark Turin, affiliated Anthropology faculty member and Associate Research Scientist at Yale’s South Asian Studies Council.
During the three-day conference, research scholars, health practitioners, and artists from universities and organizations worldwide participated in 33 panels and six roundtables about a range of issues, from conservation policy and migration studies to religious movements and regional art history. The central theme of the conference was “Communities,” with an emphasis on dialogue that pertains to communities within and across the Himalaya, regional partnerships, and practices that support Himalayan studies as an emerging field of interdisciplinary scholarship.
The panels focused on a wide range of issues including agrarian environments, modernization, Nepali art, Bhutanese identities, human environment, material culture, border communities, governance issues, constitutional issues, identities & ethnicity, language film & media studies, photography, religion, bio-medicine, and citizenship. Environmental issues were especially prominent during the conference. As Mark Turin notes, “Scholars working in the region recognize that issues of environmental change — including adaption to emerging challenges and ecosystem services — are central to sustaining livelihoods in the Himalayan region. It’s almost unavoidable that you will engage in environmental issues now, even if you’re not environmentally trained.”
A number of panels focused on professional development issues. One panel dealt with pedagogical issues, specifically the challenges of teaching about the Himalaya and Tibet in the North American undergraduate classroom. Another session, structured as a roundtable, brought together editors from all periods of the Association’s flagship journal HIMALAYA. The aim was to provide an overview of how the journal has developed to its current status and was followed by an open discussion about how it should move forward.
The conference keynote was delivered by Professor Françoise Robin who teaches Tibetan language and literature at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (Inalco, France). In her lecture, Professor Robin drew attention to the poets and independent filmmakers of Tibet who contest official narratives of unidirectional progress and development. The conference also included a film screening of award-winning filmmaker and writer Kesang Tseten’s Who Will be a Gurkha?
The whole conference was live blogged on Twitter, with scholars and colleagues all over the Himalayan region reading, responding and asking questions about panels and engaging in discussions in live time through social media. Many students and faculty from Yale presented on panels or participated in roundtables, and 25 more attended as delegates (including a handful of undergraduates). The conference received great feedback. A PhD student at Boulder noted that “It set a new precedent for regional meetings”. A senior professor termed it “the most congenial, productive and generally satisfying such event I’ve ever seen.”
The conference was sponsored by various units at Yale University including the Yale Himalaya Initiative, South Asia Studies Council, Council on East Asian Studies, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, and the Macmillan Center. Other members of the organizing committee include Timothy Gregoire, professor of forest management at F&ES; Arjun Guneratne, professor and chair of anthropology at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn.; Andrew Quintman, assistant professor of religious studies at Yale University; Sara Shneiderman, assistant professor of anthropology and South Asian studies at Yale; and Kalyanakrishnan Sivaramakrishnan, professor of anthropology and forestry & environmental studies at Yale.
See https://campuspress.yale.edu/hsc2014/ for conference website.
See https://environment.yale.edu/news/article/himalayan-studies-conference-at-yale for the conference coverage by the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies