Happening @ Michigan https://events.umich.edu/list/rss RSS Feed for Happening @ Michigan Events at the University of Michigan. CSAS Thomas R. Trautmann Honorary Lecture | Conflict, Violence and Resistance in Ancient India (October 19, 2018 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/53296 53296-13338827@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, October 19, 2018 4:00pm
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Center for South Asian Studies

Our understanding of the past changes dramatically when we recognize violence as an intimate and important part of human experience that demands the historian’s attention. It is well known that the origins, sustenance and expansion of states involve the use of coercive power. This lecture looks at conflict, violence and resistance in the context of the politics of ancient India. Moving between political ideas and practice, I focus on three themes. The first is a general discussion of the relationship between the state and violence. The second extends the analysis to the social sphere, examining how theories of kingship legitimized the state’s violence against its subjects; the state’s powers to impose punishment, torture and death; and the connections between politics and sexual violence. The third part of the lecture examines the extent to which the coercive power of the state was accepted, contested or resisted by various social groups. I also ask whether the exploration of such issues that speak to our own time endows historical inquiry with a greater contemporary relevance, even urgency, or whether it threatens to destroy the objectivity that is an essential part of the historian’s craft.

Upinder Singh is Professor of History, Ashoka University, Sonepat. Her writings range over various aspects of the political, social, economic, religious and intellectual history of ancient India; the history of Indian archaeology; and interactions between India and Southeast Asia. She is the author of Kings, Brāhmaṇas, and Temples in Orissa: An Epigraphic Study; Ancient Delhi; The Discovery of Ancient India: Early Archaeologists and the Beginnings of Archaeology; A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the Twelfth Century; and The Idea of Ancient India: Essays on Religion, Politics, and Archaeology. Her edited books include Rethinking Early Medieval India; Asian Encounters: Exploring Connected Histories and Buddhism in Asia: Revival and Reinvention. Her most recent book is Political Violence in Ancient India.

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Lecture / Discussion Tue, 02 Oct 2018 10:14:45 -0400 2018-10-19T16:00:00-04:00 2018-10-19T17:30:00-04:00 Weiser Hall Center for South Asian Studies Lecture / Discussion Upinder Singh, Professor of History, Ashoka University (Sonepat)
CSAS Lecture Series | A Vigil Wasted? Notes on the Ruin-Sublime in Afghanistan (October 26, 2018 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/53249 53249-13321611@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, October 26, 2018 4:00pm
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Center for South Asian Studies

As abandoned remnants of human activity, ruins evoke concerns about the durability of the past, a setting, and of human perception and culture. This talk explores the appearance of ruins in fiction and art set in Afghanistan. In these works syncretic colonial histories uniquely yoked to ruination (through description and setting) raise urgent questions about enduring forms of contemporary coloniality and the agency of any individual actor within a setting. This talk ultimately proposes a theory of the ‘ruin-sublime’ wherein aesthetic works join the material history of colonial desecration to psychic apprehensions to invite new ethically charged orientations towards the future.

Mrinalini Chakravorty, Associate Professor of English at the University of Virginia, is the author of In Stereotype: South Asia in the Global Literary Imaginary (Columbia UP, 2014), as well as articles on transnationalism, film, Arab women writers, interdisciplinarity, and contemporary global fiction. In Stereotype considers the influence of contemporary South Asian Anglophone novels to illustrate how their play on stereotypes about South Asia provide insight into the material and psychic investments of contemporary imaginative texts: the colonial novel, the transnational film, and the international best-seller. Chakravorty's other essays have appeared in PMLA, Modern Fiction Studies, South Asian Review, ARIEL, differences, and in various journals and collections. She received her Ph.D. in English and Critical Theory from the University of California, Irvine. At Virginia, she directs the English department’s Undergraduate Program and the concentration in Modern Literature and Culture. She is at work on two new books, one on representations of global hunger and another on postcolonial dystopias. She is also co-writing a critical biography of Freddie Mercury.

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Lecture / Discussion Wed, 17 Oct 2018 11:48:48 -0400 2018-10-26T16:00:00-04:00 2018-10-26T17:30:00-04:00 Weiser Hall Center for South Asian Studies Lecture / Discussion Mrinalini Chakravorty, Associate Professor of English, University of Virginia
Asian Languages and Cultures Info Session (November 2, 2018 12:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/57045 57045-14075027@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, November 2, 2018 12:30pm
Location: 202 S. Thayer
Organized By: Asian Languages and Cultures

Current undergraduate students are invited to an information session on the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures major, minors, and language programs. Students will have the opportunity to speak with an advisor and ask questions specific to them.

The Department of Asian Languages and Cultures (ALC) is a center for the exploration of the humanities of Asia, where students are invited to cross the boundaries of nations and of disciplines in order to develop two vital qualities: a deep knowledge and a broad global perspective.

The department offers instruction in the cultures of South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia, and in many of the languages of Asia (including Bengali, Chinese, Filipino, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Javanese, Korean, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Thai, Tibetan, Urdu, and Vietnamese).

Lunch will be provided. Please RSVP at https://lsa.umich.edu/asian/undergraduates/informationsessions.html

We hope to see you there!

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Other Wed, 24 Oct 2018 09:36:15 -0400 2018-11-02T12:30:00-04:00 2018-11-02T13:30:00-04:00 202 S. Thayer Asian Languages and Cultures Other Information Session Flyer
STRINGS OF INDIA (November 2, 2018 6:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/57024 57024-14068333@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, November 2, 2018 6:00pm
Location: Michigan League
Organized By: SPIC MACAY at the University of Michigan

SPICMACAY at the University of Michigan, cordially invites you to our Fall 2018 event “Strings of India”, a Hindustani musical concert performed by our eminent artists from India, Shri Apratim Majumdar on Sarod and Shri Amit Kumar Chatterjee on Tabla.

The musical concert will depict the versatile intertwining of evening North Indian ragas played on the sarod, an ancient Indian stringed instrument known for its deep introspective sound. The musical journey will provide a spiritual parallel through which the listener can experience the melding of raga (medoly) and tala (rhythm) and relate it to the inner spiritual self and emotions.

COME JOIN US FOR A SOULFUL MUSICAL JOURNEY!

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Performance Tue, 23 Oct 2018 15:11:42 -0400 2018-11-02T18:00:00-04:00 2018-11-02T20:00:00-04:00 Michigan League SPIC MACAY at the University of Michigan Performance Strings of India
CSAS Kavita S. Datla Memorial Lecture | Dark Genealogies: Ambedkar's Struggles with History (November 9, 2018 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/53278 53278-13332419@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, November 9, 2018 4:00pm
Location: Museum of Art
Organized By: Center for South Asian Studies

I am fascinated by the persistence with which Ambedkar gets back to the question of ‘the past.’ A superficial take would suggest that his are not serious interrogations of history - for which Ambedkar did not have the time or the temperament. Rather, these are fragments that pursue the faux historical tone of the question: how was something like untouchability possible? The power of the phrase comes from the combination of two questions into one; the first is a presentist question: how is it possible for people to act like this towards members of their own society? The second is a genuinely past-related curiosity: how did something so inhuman come into existence: how, where, for what reasons?

I will suggest in my talk that this is a fairly common form of writing about the past which is not given a distinct name because of the overly general use of the term ‘history’ for all kinds writings dealing with the past. I will argue that there is a form of writing used by thinkers who have an insistent past-related question to resolve for which cognitive resources of conventional-positivist history are not sufficient. I suggest that we classify this kind of writing as a class, give it a conceptual name, and treat Ambedkar’s engagement with history as key example of it.

Sudipta Kaviraj is professor of Indian politics and intellectual history at Columbia University. He has taught at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and was an Agatha Harrison Fellow at St. Antony's College, Oxford. His publications include: The Imaginary Institution of India (2010) Civil Society: History and Possibilities co-edited with Sunil Khilnani (2001), Politics in India (edited) (1999), and The Unhappy Consciousness: Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay and the Formation of Nationalist Discourse in India (1995).

This lecture recognizes Kavita Saraswati Datla’s contributions to the field of South Asian history. Professor Datla passed away in 2017, after a three-year battle with cancer. A generous gift by her family has endowed this annual lecture, to honor her memory at the institution where she first developed her love for South Asian history, and to which they have strong ties.

Kavita S. Datla graduated from the University of Michigan with a BA in History in 1997. She received an MA in South Asian history from the Centre for Historical Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (1999), and a PhD in South Asian History from the University of California, Berkeley (2006). Upon completion of her PhD, she joined Mount Holyoke College as an Assistant Professor of History, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2013, and Professor in 2017 (posthumously). She is the author of "The Language of Secular Islam: Urdu Nationalism and Colonial India" (University of Hawaii, 2013), a critically acclaimed history of Urdu and nationalist politics in early-twentieth century India, as well as articles in leading journals, such as "Modern Asian Studies" and "Law and History Review."

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Lecture / Discussion Tue, 06 Nov 2018 08:42:03 -0500 2018-11-09T16:00:00-05:00 2018-11-09T17:30:00-05:00 Museum of Art Center for South Asian Studies Lecture / Discussion Sudipta Kaviraj, Professor of Indian Politics and Intellectual History, Columbia University
Indian American Student Association Culture Show (November 9, 2018 6:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/57032 57032-14068338@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, November 9, 2018 6:30pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Michigan Union Ticket Office (MUTO)

Presented by The Indian American Student Association

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Performance Tue, 23 Oct 2018 16:34:27 -0400 2018-11-09T18:30:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Michigan Union Ticket Office (MUTO) Performance
CSAS Lecture Series | “We Were Always Buddhist:" Caste Emancipation and Sexual Politics in South India (November 30, 2018 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/53320 53320-13340971@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, November 30, 2018 4:00pm
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Center for South Asian Studies

I am a medical and sociocultural anthropologist and interdisciplinary scholar working at the intersection of several fields including feminist, postcolonial and queer theories; religion and secularism; medicine and the body; and South Asia. My research projects in South India and the United States have roots in longstanding engagements with the politics of sexuality, gender and religion. These projects have focused in particular on the body as an artifact of culture and power in relation to questions of sexual subjectivity, social transformation and citizenship projects. I have conducted research in the US on sexual ‘risk’ and transsexual medicine and in South India on ‘sacred prostitution’ (devadasi dedication) and Dalit conversion to Buddhism.

My first book, Given to the Goddess: South Indian Devadasis and the Sexuality of Religion (Duke University Press, 2014), is an ethnography of a contemporary practice in which girls are married to a goddess. I take this ongoing practice and its reform as an occasion to consider what can count as religion and who and what marriage is for. In 2015, Given to the Goddess received the first Michelle Rosaldo best first book prize in Feminist Anthropology, the Ruth Benedict prize from the Association for Queer Anthropology, and the Clifford Geertz Prize for best book in the anthropology of religion from the Society for the Anthropology of Religion. The book also received honorable mention for the best book in South Asian Studies from the Association for Asian Studies in 2016.

I serve as the director of graduate studies in the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program. In college and university service, I am a member of the core faculty of the Nilgiris Field Learning Center, a Cornell-Keystone Collaboration; a member of the Humanities Council, Society for the Humanities; a member of the Qualities of Life Working Group, Einaudi Center; a member of the steering committee for Faith, Hope and Knowledge: Interfaith Dialogues for Global Justice and Peace, Einaudi Center, and a member of the Provost’s Social Sciences Idea Panel, 2017-present.

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Lecture / Discussion Wed, 01 Aug 2018 16:11:35 -0400 2018-11-30T16:00:00-05:00 2018-11-30T17:30:00-05:00 Weiser Hall Center for South Asian Studies Lecture / Discussion Lucinda Ramberg, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, Cornell University
CSAS Lecture Series | Digital Tamil Cinema: Tendencies, Trends, and Possibilities (December 7, 2018 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/53275 53275-13332390@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, December 7, 2018 4:00pm
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Center for South Asian Studies

Dr. Swarnavel Eswaran Pillai is an associate professor in the English and MI (Media and Information) Departments at Michigan State University. He is a graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India, the premier Film School in Asia and the prestigious University of Iowa. His documentaries include Unfinished Journey: A City in Transition (2012), Migrations of Islam (2014), Hmong Memories at the Crossroads (2015), and Nagapattinam: Waves from the Deep (2018). His research focuses on the history, theory, and production of documentaries, and the specificity of Tamil cinema and its complex relationship with Hollywood as well as popular Hindi films. His books are Cinema: Sattagamum Saalaramum (Nizhal, 2013), an anthology of essays on documentaries and experimental films in Tamil and Madras Studios: Narrative, Genre, and Ideology in Tamil Cinema (Sage Publications, 2015).

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Lecture / Discussion Tue, 20 Nov 2018 10:28:25 -0500 2018-12-07T16:00:00-05:00 2018-12-07T17:30:00-05:00 Weiser Hall Center for South Asian Studies Lecture / Discussion Swarnavel Eswaran, Associate Professor, English and Media Information, Michigan State University
CSAS Lecture Series | Understanding the New Credibility Regimes of Development: The Politics of Sanitary Pads as a Pro-Poor Technology in India (January 18, 2019 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/53181 53181-13272086@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, January 18, 2019 4:00pm
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Center for South Asian Studies

Technology has long played a central role in efforts to alleviate global poverty, with international NGOs and developed world governments using it as an important modernization tool. But these interventions have had mixed impacts: in addition to perpetuating the West’s dominance, these technologies are often simply rejected by citizens in the developing world because they do not embody relevant values and priorities. But in recent years the international development landscape has changed. The players involved have diversified, now including international and local NGOs, social entrepreneurs and innovators, venture capitalists, universities, and developing world governments. And, there have been growing calls to ensure that interventions are “evidence-based”, preferably deployed on the basis of large-scale, quantitative evidence and even randomized controlled trials. How have these changes affect the pro-poor technology landscape and its politics? What are the implications for citizens in the developing world? In this paper I explore these questions by focusing on the politics of the sanitary pad in India. In recent years, “period poverty” has come to be seen as an important development issue, with sanitary pads becoming the main solution. Rather than the result of systematic and unbiased evidence gathering, however, I argue that this problem and solution are the result of the new credibility regimes that underlie development governance today. I pay attention to how and why particular kinds of interventions are recognized and validated by public and private, large and small, development initiatives. Indeed, even the definitions of knowledge and expertise are shaped by these priorities. The national and international media play important roles in influencing the sanitary pad intervention as well. Finally, I explore how these politics shape the role, rights, and responsibilities of the female citizen in India.

Shobita Parthasarathy is Professor of Public Policy and Women's Studies, and Director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, at University of Michigan. She is interested in how technological innovation, and innovation systems, can better achieve public interest and social justice goals, as well as in the politics of knowledge and expertise in science and technology policy. Her current research focuses on the politics of technology for the poor, with a focus in India. She is the author of numerous articles and two books:Patent Politics: Life Forms, Markets, and the Public Interest in the United States and Europe(University of Chicago Press, 2017) and Building Genetic Medicine: Breast Cancer, Technology, and the Comparative Politics of Health Care (MIT Press, 2007).

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Lecture / Discussion Mon, 05 Nov 2018 13:37:35 -0500 2019-01-18T16:00:00-05:00 2019-01-18T17:30:00-05:00 Weiser Hall Center for South Asian Studies Lecture / Discussion Shobita Parthasarathy, Professor of Public Policy, U-M
CANCELLED: Reading the Americanized Joothan: The Translator’s Cringe (January 31, 2019 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/59242 59242-14719625@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, January 31, 2019 4:00pm
Location: 202 S. Thayer
Organized By: Asian Languages and Cultures

My translation of Hindi Dalit writer, Omprakash Valmiki’s autobiography, Joothan, was published by Samya in 2003. Columbia University Press bought the American rights for the book and appointed an editor to edit my translation. My talk will look at some of the changes the American editor made to my translation. As I discovered, by comparing the Indian and American version, the changes are multiple, and, from my perspective, diminish the beauty and the power of this major Dalit text. Comparing the two versions also brings out the sad fact that certain cultural contexts require an open mind that does not rush to judgment when challenged to move out of its ‘comfort zone.’

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Lecture / Discussion Tue, 29 Jan 2019 16:25:14 -0500 2019-01-31T16:00:00-05:00 2019-01-31T18:00:00-05:00 202 S. Thayer Asian Languages and Cultures Lecture / Discussion Arun Mukherjee poster
CANCELED: CSAS Lecture Series | Of Commodities and Frontiers: Looking for "Capitalism" on the Edges of Britain’s Indian Colonie (February 1, 2019 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/53321 53321-13340972@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, February 1, 2019 4:00pm
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Center for South Asian Studies

Due to travel difficulties we regret that this event has been canceled. We hope to see you at our next event!

In a longer project called The Postcolonial Commons, I am interested in the emergence of fluid political subjectivities around questions of defending existing commons, and creating new ones, in two regions of India: of small-scale fishers in coastal Kerala, and small farmers in the Garhwal region of present-day Uttarakhand state. I am in conversation with strands of contemporary political theory (represented, among others, by Hardt and Negri, Federici, de Angelis, Zizek, and Bauwens) that posit a future organised around ‘the commons’. However, while these writings are futuristic, I suggest that they have an underpinning narrative of the transition from the ‘pre-capitalist commons’ to the ‘commons unmade through capitalism’, which has implications for the political imaginaries outlined in their works. I challenge their orthodox account of this transition with drawing on writings on ‘postcolonial capitalism’, including my own recent work.

For this seminar, I offer two sections of the ‘historical’ part of the larger project: a discussion of the historiographical challenges in reconstructing ‘the pre-capitalist commons’ and the transitions it undergoes ‘under capitalism’ in relation to Kerala fisheries and Garhwali forests, and the limits of the ‘commodity frontiers’ approach to narrate this process. Among other things, the very nature of ‘rule’, and the problems of establishing it in these ‘unruly’ spaces, has a bearing on the sources – rather, the lack thereof – on which an account of such a process can be reconstituted. Accounts are few, and the reliability of some sources is uncertain, for much of the period of early colonial conquest. And what accounts there are do not point to the transformation of fish or forest into ‘commodities’ until relatively recently. Nor are capitalist production relations visible in any meaningful sense. The conditions for fish and forests becoming ‘commodities’, and for the emergence of capitalism in these sectors, come from a number of scientific, technological and other governmental innovations under late-colonial and early-postcolonial developmentalism. I conclude by identifying the implications of my account for radical political theory of the commons.

Subir Sinha studied History at the University of Delhi (BA) and Political Science at Northwestern University (MS, PhD), and has taught at Northwestern University and the University of Vermont. His research interests are institutional change, sustainable development, social movements, state-society relations in development, and South Asian politics, with a current focus on decentralised development in India, early postcolonial planning, and on the global fishworkers' movement.

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Lecture / Discussion Tue, 29 Jan 2019 13:31:21 -0500 2019-02-01T16:00:00-05:00 2019-02-01T17:30:00-05:00 Weiser Hall Center for South Asian Studies Lecture / Discussion Subir Sinha, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London
De-Centering the Global Middle Ages (February 8, 2019 9:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/52918 52918-13142328@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, February 8, 2019 9:00am
Location: Tisch Hall
Organized By: Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS)

De-centering the Global Middle Ages invites researchers to consider scholarly perspectives of the “global turn” of the premodern world, addressing connectivity and mobility of the globe c. 500-1600 CE. What work does the idea of “the medieval” do, and for whom? What do we gain and what do we lose by insisting on a shared notion of the medieval? By conceiving of a more diverse Middle Ages characterized by mobility and connectedness rather than isolation and limited travel? This symposium will explore what the “medieval” means for scholars of various geographic regions, including Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe in hopes of facilitating a dramatic shift in our visions of what it means to do medieval history, and the meaning of global history more broadly.

Please see the conference website for the program and registration details.

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Conference / Symposium Wed, 19 Dec 2018 13:08:18 -0500 2019-02-08T09:00:00-05:00 2019-02-08T20:00:00-05:00 Tisch Hall Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS) Conference / Symposium Tisch Hall
CSAS Film Series | Fireflies in the Abyss (February 8, 2019 6:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/60590 60590-14910409@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, February 8, 2019 6:30pm
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Center for South Asian Studies

This documentary is part of Traveling Film South Asia 2018.

India | 2015 | 88 mins

Eleven-year-old Suraj crawls through tunnels, scratching coal from rock in a northeastern Indian boomtown. Such “ratholes” have become the sole source of income for many Nepalese migrants, whose itnerant lives intertwine in this chronicle of people living on the margins. With the loss of his mother, and an unreliable alcoholic father, Suraj is forced to become independent at a young age. Toiling in the dangerous mines with an indomitable spirit and stubborn smile, he hopes to one day beat the odds and return to school. A transportng and immersive journey fostering deep emotonal connectedness to its subjects, Firefies in the Abyss illustrates how even seemingly insurmountable obstacles can help the human spirit grow.

About the Director:
Chandrasekhar Reddy is an independent producer/director, having extensive experience in a variety of documentary formats – factual, developmental and environmental. Previous credits include flms for Natonal Geographic Asia, Discovery Asia, United Natons Development Program (UNDP), Ministry of Tourism GoI, and BBC. His short Coalboy was part of the “Why Poverty” series. Firefies in the Abyss, is his debut feature length documentary.

WINNER OF THE AWARD FOR THE BEST LONG DOCUMENTARY AT THE INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARY AND SHORT FILM FESTIVAL OF KERALA (IDSFFK) (2016)

WINNER OF THE AWARD FOR THE BEST FILM & THE BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY AT THE MUMBAI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, 2016

BALA KAILASAM MEMORIAL AWARD, CINEMA RENDEZVOUS 2016

If you are a person with a disability who requires an accommodation to attend this event, please reach out to us at least 2 weeks in advance of this event. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

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Film Screening Mon, 11 Feb 2019 14:36:24 -0500 2019-02-08T18:30:00-05:00 2019-02-08T20:00:00-05:00 Weiser Hall Center for South Asian Studies Film Screening Fireflies in the Abyss
De-Centering the Global Middle Ages (February 9, 2019 9:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/52918 52918-13142329@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Saturday, February 9, 2019 9:00am
Location: Tisch Hall
Organized By: Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS)

De-centering the Global Middle Ages invites researchers to consider scholarly perspectives of the “global turn” of the premodern world, addressing connectivity and mobility of the globe c. 500-1600 CE. What work does the idea of “the medieval” do, and for whom? What do we gain and what do we lose by insisting on a shared notion of the medieval? By conceiving of a more diverse Middle Ages characterized by mobility and connectedness rather than isolation and limited travel? This symposium will explore what the “medieval” means for scholars of various geographic regions, including Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe in hopes of facilitating a dramatic shift in our visions of what it means to do medieval history, and the meaning of global history more broadly.

Please see the conference website for the program and registration details.

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Conference / Symposium Wed, 19 Dec 2018 13:08:18 -0500 2019-02-09T09:00:00-05:00 2019-02-09T17:00:00-05:00 Tisch Hall Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS) Conference / Symposium Tisch Hall
The Premodern Colloquium. To Fix the Rules of the Path of Proper Conduct: Maitraka Inscriptions (February 17, 2019 3:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/60484 60484-14899151@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Sunday, February 17, 2019 3:30pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS)

The Premodern Colloquium is a faculty and graduate student discussion group, now in its fortieth year. We normally meet four times each term on Sunday afternoons to discuss work in progress presented by local and visiting scholars, usually book chapters, articles, and dissertation chapters.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 04 Feb 2019 11:05:25 -0500 2019-02-17T15:30:00-05:00 2019-02-17T18:00:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS) Workshop / Seminar L: temple at Gop R: stupa at Sana caves
Language Fair (February 22, 2019 10:30am) https://events.umich.edu/event/60997 60997-15000025@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, February 22, 2019 10:30am
Location: Shapiro Library
Organized By: Asian Languages and Cultures

Are you interested in learning more about the Asian languages taught at the University of Michigan? The Department of Asian Languages and Cultures invites you to the Asian Languages Fair, featuring guests from the Chinese Language Program, Japanese Language Program, Korean Language Program, South Asian Language Program, and Southeast Asian Language Program.

You are invited to come learn about opportunities at UM to study the following languages: Bengali, Chinese, Filipino, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Javanese, Korean, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Thai, Tibetan, Urdu, and Vietnamese. There will also be opportunities to win raffle prizes.

The Asian Languages Fair will be held in the Shapiro Lobby from 10:30am-1:30pm on Friday, February 22. We hope to see you there!

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Fair / Festival Fri, 08 Feb 2019 16:30:24 -0500 2019-02-22T10:30:00-05:00 2019-02-22T13:30:00-05:00 Shapiro Library Asian Languages and Cultures Fair / Festival red and brown tower
Beyond Crisis: Science and Technology Studies in the Age of Emergency (February 25, 2019 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/61066 61066-15027193@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, February 25, 2019 4:00pm
Location: Haven Hall
Organized By: Science, Technology & Society

Environmental crisis, financial crisis, states of emergency and urgency. Crisis forms the backdrop of contemporary debates about the role of science and technology in society. Is there a "beyond crisis" when the concept itself has shaped so many of the critical tools in the humanities and social sciences? This graduate student panel will consider the insights that STS theories and methods bring to bear on discussions of various political, environmental, and financial crises in the present.

Presenting:
Nick Caverly (Anthropology) "Detroit, Crisis City"
Nishita Trisal (Anthropology) "Managing Risk and Volatility in Kashmir's Economy"
James Arnott (Sustainability and Environment) "The Sustainability Crisis and the Science Crisis"

Discussant:
Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Center for Internet & Society, Delhi, India

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Workshop / Seminar Tue, 12 Feb 2019 11:22:13 -0500 2019-02-25T16:00:00-05:00 2019-02-25T17:30:00-05:00 Haven Hall Science, Technology & Society Workshop / Seminar Haven Hall
CSAS Film Series | Soz - A Ballad of Maladies (February 28, 2019 6:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/60592 60592-14910410@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, February 28, 2019 6:30pm
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Center for South Asian Studies

This documentary is part of Traveling Film South Asia 2018.

India | 2016 | 85 mins

Of folk, rock and hip-hop, this documentary captures the rhythm and blues of resistance in the Kashmir valley. It is a portrait of those musicians and artists who have turned their art into weapons of resistance during periods of heightened state repression and violence in the region. As the Kashmiri satirist and poet Zareef Ahmad Zareef ponders over the credibility of his pen, a sparrow’s song of lament takes over; taking us on a journey to discover the threads of people's history of Kashmir, which has been preserved in the region's folk poetry and music for centuries. A departure from Kashmir's orientalist stereotype of a 'paradise' unfurls a transformed cultural landscape of the deeply militarized valley where spiritual ideals of Sufyana music and traditional poetry metamorphose into political lyricism of modern Hip Hop and Rock. From underground artists and rock musicians to cartoonists and performance artists, the cultural practitioners in the film evoke collective memory of their people whilst negotiating with questions of survival, resistance and freedom – all deeply embroiled in the complex conflict of Kashmir.

About the Directors:
Tushar is an independent filmmaker and film editor based in Mumbai. He has worked on numerous independent and NGO-based documentary films over the last seven years. A post-graduate in mass communication from the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, he has also taught filmmaking at several universities besides filming and editing independent work. Sarvnik is a writer and independent filmmaker based out of the Mumbai film industry. She has worked as a screenwriter in the industry over the last seven years after completing her graduation in Mass Communication from the AJK Mass Communication Research Centre. Besides writing for films she has also authored a book titled ‘Where arrows meet’. This is the debut feature-length flm of both the filmmakers.

If you are a person with a disability who requires an accommodation to attend this event, please reach out to us at least 2 weeks in advance of this event. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

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Film Screening Mon, 11 Feb 2019 14:14:37 -0500 2019-02-28T18:30:00-05:00 2019-02-28T20:00:00-05:00 Weiser Hall Center for South Asian Studies Film Screening Soz - A Ballad of Maladies
CSAS Film Series | Is it too much to ask? (March 11, 2019 6:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/60594 60594-14910412@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, March 11, 2019 6:30pm
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Center for South Asian Studies

This documentary is part of Traveling Film South Asia 2018.

India | 2017 | 30 mins

The film follows the journey of two friends, Smile and Glady, looking for a rental apartment in Chennai and the obstacles and social stigma they encounter in the process for being single and for being transgender women. Their identity renders them vulnerable before the caste ridden, feudal and patriarchal landlords of the city who, by denying them their apartments, deny their existence too. But Smile and Glady face every day as it comes with grace, humor and positivity, turning their anger and frustrations into songs, dances, plays and works of art that supply them with the hope to live.

About the Director:
Leena Manimekalai is a multple award winning flm-maker with ttles like Goddesses (2008), Sengadal (2011), White Van Stories (2015).

If you are a person with a disability who requires an accommodation to attend this event, please reach out to us at least 2 weeks in advance of this event. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

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Film Screening Mon, 11 Feb 2019 14:15:00 -0500 2019-03-11T18:30:00-04:00 2019-03-11T19:00:00-04:00 Weiser Hall Center for South Asian Studies Film Screening Is it too much to ask?
CSAS Lecture Series | Practicing Vulnerability -- Men's Rights Activists, Embodiment and Appropriation (March 15, 2019 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/53188 53188-13278543@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, March 15, 2019 4:00pm
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Center for South Asian Studies

One of the primary strategies through which the Men’s Rights Movement (MRM) in India seeks to challenge the reform of laws of marriage and gender-based violence established through feminist mobilization, is to claim recognition within global discourses of human rights and gender equity, aligning with the messages of a range of groups across the political spectrum. This paper explores how these alignments draw on images of feminism as modernity and menace, and normative masculinity as bewilderment, abandonment and alienation, appropriating the identities of marginalized men and feminized weakness to their advantage. I draw upon my ethnographic fieldwork with Men’s Rights Activists across Indian cities to identify some of the contradictions about gendered and intersectional power within such representations and their connection to MRM movement strategies. I argue that Men’s Rights Activists’ practices of projecting vengeance and claiming vulnerability in legal and political realms are premised upon inversions of discourses of power, elisions of gender, caste and class, and conflations of feminism and the State.

Srimati Basu is Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Anthropology, and a member of the Committee on Social Theory and the Asia Center Affiliates. She has an Interdisciplinary Ph.D. from Ohio State University in Cultural Studies/ Anthropology/ Women's Studies, and her teaching, research and community work interests include Legal Anthropology, Women in Development, Feminist Jurisprudence, South Asia, Feminist Theory and Methodology, Work, Property and Violence Against Women. Following an ethnographic study of feminist legal reform, marriage, courts, mediation, rape and domestic violence law, she conducted fieldwork on men's rights activits, marriage and domestic violence, the subject of her 2013-14 Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Fellowship in India and now a monograph in process.

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Lecture / Discussion Mon, 04 Mar 2019 10:37:40 -0500 2019-03-15T16:00:00-04:00 2019-03-15T17:30:00-04:00 Weiser Hall Center for South Asian Studies Lecture / Discussion Srimati Basu
Why Asian Studies? (March 29, 2019 12:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/61924 61924-15239148@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, March 29, 2019 12:30pm
Location: 202 S. Thayer
Organized By: Asian Languages and Cultures

Current undergraduate students are invited to an information session on the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures major, minors, and language programs. Students will have the opportunity to speak with an advisor and ask questions specific to them.

The Department of Asian Languages and Cultures (ALC) is a center for the exploration of the humanities of Asia, where students are invited to cross the boundaries of nations and of disciplines in order to develop two vital qualities: a deep knowledge and a broad global perspective.

The department offers instruction in the cultures of South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia, and in many of the languages of Asia (including Bengali, Chinese, Filipino, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Javanese, Korean, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Thai, Tibetan, Urdu, and Vietnamese).

Lunch will be provided. Please RSVP at https://lsa.umich.edu/asian/undergraduates/informationsessions.html

We hope to see you there!

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Other Thu, 07 Mar 2019 11:23:15 -0500 2019-03-29T12:30:00-04:00 2019-03-29T13:30:00-04:00 202 S. Thayer Asian Languages and Cultures Other ALC info session poster
"Celebrating the Poromboke Commons: Climate Change, Land-Use Change and Cultural Activism" (April 10, 2019 5:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/59234 59234-14719613@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, April 10, 2019 5:30pm
Location: Museum of Art
Organized By: Institute for the Humanities

Chennai, India-based environmental activist Nityanand Jayaraman investigates and reports on corporate abuses of environment and human rights. In this lecture, he discusses shared use and communally owned resources known as the poromoboke and the blatant encroachment on the poromboke for building construction and garbage dumping.

Poromboke is a Tamil word meaning shared-use and communally owned resources like bodies of water, seashores and grazing lands. Today, it has a negative connotation and is used to describe worthless people or places. This erosion in meaning is the result of a property-making agenda of the state that views open, unbuilt and unbuildable spaces as wasteland. But poromboke commons are layered with multiple land uses, cultures and economies. Far from being worthless, poromboke spaces are the backbone of any economy, and the basis for the planet's resilience. India is witnessing a wave of protests against land acquisition for infrastructure projects that prioritize built infrastructure over unbuilt and open spaces. Surviving climate change is a fight to prevent degrading land-use change, and the re-orienting of values. The task then is a cultural one—of revalorizing the poromboke and changing our notions of value and worth with respect to places, economies, cultures and peoples.

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Lecture / Discussion Tue, 26 Mar 2019 15:00:55 -0400 2019-04-10T17:30:00-04:00 2019-04-10T19:00:00-04:00 Museum of Art Institute for the Humanities Lecture / Discussion Nityanand Jayaram
CSAS Lecture Series | Film’s Mise-en-Scène as Labor’s Social Space (April 12, 2019 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/52923 52923-13148783@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, April 12, 2019 4:00pm
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Center for South Asian Studies

Cinema’s heterogeneous artifactual status—as a regulated and profit-making commodity, technological apparatus, representational medium and employment opportunity—links the changing look of contemporary Hindi cinema’s mise-en-scène to the current commodification of land and leisure, the technologization of environment, and the shifting social range of Bollywood’s workers in globalizing India. Conceiving of filmed space as a tensile relationship between a film’s onscreen space and its defining social spaces, which together constitute a film’s visual appearance and its institutional materiality, I look at the ways in which Bollywood’s backgrounds register India’s politico-economic transitions. The composition and appearance of a film’s backgrounds encode socio-economic histories of India’s transition from an era of economic protectionism to the current phase of privatization and the commodification of everyday life. Based on my interviews with professionals who work on producing Hindi cinema’s locations and backgrounds, conducted in the months leading up to the national elections that put Narendra Modi in power in 2014, this talk proposes a spatial film historiography to account for the complex spatialities of a media form and society, when both are in transition.

Priya Jaikumar is Associate Professor at the Division of Cinema and Media Studies in the School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California. Her talk will draw on her forthcoming book, Where Histories Reside: India as Filmed Space, in production with Duke University Press.

If you are a person with a disability who requires an accommodation to attend this event, please reach out to us at least 2 weeks in advance of this event. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange. Email us at csas@umich.edu.

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Lecture / Discussion Wed, 01 Aug 2018 08:15:59 -0400 2019-04-12T16:00:00-04:00 2019-04-12T17:30:00-04:00 Weiser Hall Center for South Asian Studies Lecture / Discussion Priya Jaikumar, Associate Professor, Division of Cinema and Media Studies, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California
CSAS Film Series | Rasan Piya (April 15, 2019 6:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/60597 60597-14910417@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, April 15, 2019 6:30pm
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Center for South Asian Studies

This documentary is part of Traveling Film South Asia 2018.

Rasan Piya is a documentary on the life of renowned Hindustani classical vocalist, Ustad Abdul Rashid Khan, who represented the 16th generation of Miyan Tansen's lineage.

He continued not just to compose, but also to teach, travel and perform across all of India till he lived. He passed away recently, on 18th February 2016 at the age of 107 years. His story is that of an extraordinary musician, poet and teacher; of someone who has not only preserved but also added much to an ancient Indian art form; of a brave man who overcame his physical limitations to create beautiful music and inspire a whole generation of musicians and music lovers.

About the Director:
Writer, director Niharika Popli, after graduating in Engineering from University of Delhi in 2010, worked with a child NGO in Delhi, directing plays, writing, telling stories and teaching. The purity of Ustad Abdul Rashid Khan music and his zest for life inspired her to make this her first feature length documentary.

If you are a person with a disability who requires an accommodation to attend this event, please reach out to us at least 2 weeks in advance of this event. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

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Film Screening Mon, 11 Feb 2019 14:15:46 -0500 2019-04-15T18:30:00-04:00 2019-04-15T20:00:00-04:00 Weiser Hall Center for South Asian Studies Film Screening Rasan Piya
2019 Digital South Asia Conference | Portals and Platforms: Cultures of Entertainment in Digital India (April 19, 2019 10:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/62691 62691-15425435@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, April 19, 2019 10:00am
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Center for South Asian Studies

Full conference details, including schedule, is available here: https://ii.umich.edu/csas/news-events/events/conferences/portals-and-platforms--cultures-of-entertainment-in-digital-indi.html

3:30 pm-6:00 pm Film Screening at Michigan Theater
Mard Ko Dard Nahin Hota (The Man Who Feels No Pain), 2019

6:00 pm-6:30 pm Q & A with Ankur Khanna, Producer, RSVP Films & Paromita Vohra, documentary filmmaker

Sponsors: Center for South Asian Studies and the Global Media Studies Initiative at the University of Michigan

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Conference / Symposium Mon, 01 Apr 2019 16:13:02 -0400 2019-04-19T10:00:00-04:00 2019-04-19T18:30:00-04:00 Weiser Hall Center for South Asian Studies Conference / Symposium Portals and Platforms: Cultures of Entertainment in Digital India
CSAS Film Screening | Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota (The Man Who Feels No Pain) (April 19, 2019 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/63173 63173-15585190@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, April 19, 2019 3:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Center for South Asian Studies

Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota (The Man Who Feels No Pain) is a 2018 Indian Hindi-language action comedy film written and directed by Vasan Bala and produced by RSVP Movies. The film stars Abhimanyu Dassani, Radhika Madan, Gulshan Devaiah, Mahesh Manjrekar and Jimit Trivedi. The film premiered in the Midnight Madness section of the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the People's Choice Award: Midnight Madness. The film's story follows a young man who has a rare condition called Congenital insensitivity to pain and strikes out on a quest to vanquish his foes. The film's producer Ankur Khanna will be in attendance and the screening will be followed by a Q n A with him.

If you are a person with a disability who requires an accommodation to attend this event, please reach out to us at least 2 weeks in advance of this event. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

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Film Screening Tue, 16 Apr 2019 08:38:43 -0400 2019-04-19T15:00:00-04:00 2019-04-19T18:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Center for South Asian Studies Film Screening Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota (The Man Who Feels No Pain)
International Conference on Population, Poverty, and Inequality June 27-29 (June 27, 2019 8:30am) https://events.umich.edu/event/63510 63510-15767672@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, June 27, 2019 8:30am
Location: Institute For Social Research
Organized By: Institute for Social Research

This conference is organized by the Scientific Panel on Population, Poverty, and Inequality of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) https://iussp.org/en/panel/population-poverty-and-inequality, in collaboration with the Population Studies Center in the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. The conference will feature researchers from a wide range of countries presenting research analyzing the interaction of population with poverty and inequality in low-income and middle-income countries. Schedule will be available on the conference web site when finalized: https://iussp.org/en/iussp-population-poverty-and-inequality-research-conference

All are welcome. No registration required.

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Conference / Symposium Mon, 03 Jun 2019 14:24:43 -0400 2019-06-27T08:30:00-04:00 2019-06-27T18:00:00-04:00 Institute For Social Research Institute for Social Research Conference / Symposium
International Conference on Population, Poverty, and Inequality June 27-29 (June 28, 2019 8:30am) https://events.umich.edu/event/63510 63510-15767673@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, June 28, 2019 8:30am
Location: Institute For Social Research
Organized By: Institute for Social Research

This conference is organized by the Scientific Panel on Population, Poverty, and Inequality of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) https://iussp.org/en/panel/population-poverty-and-inequality, in collaboration with the Population Studies Center in the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. The conference will feature researchers from a wide range of countries presenting research analyzing the interaction of population with poverty and inequality in low-income and middle-income countries. Schedule will be available on the conference web site when finalized: https://iussp.org/en/iussp-population-poverty-and-inequality-research-conference

All are welcome. No registration required.

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Conference / Symposium Mon, 03 Jun 2019 14:24:43 -0400 2019-06-28T08:30:00-04:00 2019-06-28T18:00:00-04:00 Institute For Social Research Institute for Social Research Conference / Symposium
International Conference on Population, Poverty, and Inequality June 27-29 (June 29, 2019 8:30am) https://events.umich.edu/event/63510 63510-15767674@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Saturday, June 29, 2019 8:30am
Location: Institute For Social Research
Organized By: Institute for Social Research

This conference is organized by the Scientific Panel on Population, Poverty, and Inequality of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) https://iussp.org/en/panel/population-poverty-and-inequality, in collaboration with the Population Studies Center in the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. The conference will feature researchers from a wide range of countries presenting research analyzing the interaction of population with poverty and inequality in low-income and middle-income countries. Schedule will be available on the conference web site when finalized: https://iussp.org/en/iussp-population-poverty-and-inequality-research-conference

All are welcome. No registration required.

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Conference / Symposium Mon, 03 Jun 2019 14:24:43 -0400 2019-06-29T08:30:00-04:00 2019-06-29T15:00:00-04:00 Institute For Social Research Institute for Social Research Conference / Symposium
CSAS Lecture Series | Widows under Hindu Law: an Overview (September 13, 2019 4:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/64842 64842-16460996@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, September 13, 2019 4:30pm
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Center for South Asian Studies

This talk will present a broad history of the Hindu widow, as she is treated within works of the voluminous, two-millennia-long tradition of classical Hindu law known as Dharmaśāstra. Specifically, it will show how the opinions of jurists working within the Hindu legal tradition changed over time on four major issues related to Hindu widows. These issues are: widow remarriage and levirate; a widow’s right to inherit; widow self-immolation or sati; and widow-asceticism. This talk will then argue that the shifting opinions of Hindu jurists on these four issues are, to a significant extent, causally related to one or another and that they allow us to identify and track major shifts in orthodox Brahmanical attitudes toward women during the early medieval period (c. 500-1300 CE).

David Brick is assistant professor of Sanskrit literature at the University of Michigan. His research deals with diverse aspects of early India and Sanskrit literature with a special focus on the influential tradition of classical Hindu law known as Dharmaśāstra. His first book, Brahmanical Theories of the Gift: A Critical Edition and Annotated Translation of the Dānakāṇḍa of the Kṛtyakalpatura (Harvard Oriental Series 2015), comprises the first critical edition and translation into any modern language of a dānanibandha, a classical Hindu legal digest devoted to the culturally and religiously important topic of gifting. His next major project will be a comprehensive study of widows under Hindu law.

If you are a person with a disability who requires an accommodation to attend this event, please reach out to us at least 2 weeks in advance of this event. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

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Lecture / Discussion Fri, 02 Aug 2019 15:21:55 -0400 2019-09-13T16:30:00-04:00 2019-09-13T18:00:00-04:00 Weiser Hall Center for South Asian Studies Lecture / Discussion David Brick, Assistant Professor of Sanskrit Literature, University of Michigan
CSAS Thomas R. Trautmann Honorary Lecture | Early Readers and Early Readings of the Mahābhārata (September 20, 2019 4:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/65321 65321-16571515@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, September 20, 2019 4:30pm
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Center for South Asian Studies

The Sanskrit Mahābhārata did not receive a commentary until the eleventh century. Well before then, however, it had become a central feature of Indian high culture, adapted by poets and dramatists, deliberated on by philosophers and aestheticians. Over the past century scholars have usefully examined these early treatments for what they tell us about the history of the Mahābhārata’s text. The commentaries, some of which establish a version of the text, have been put to similar text-historical use.

In this lecture I will argue for the value of the material that lies outside the boundaries of the epic proper, not in writing the history of the text, but in writing the history of that text’s meaning to its readers. An interest in the history of the reception of ancient canonical texts through their commentaries and related paratexts has gained prominence in the study of the literary traditions of other parts of the world, because of its inherent interest and its utility for intellectual history. With some exceptions, the Indological field has remained hesitant about reception studies, in part because it is perceived to open the door to anachronistic readings, thereby violating a governing disciplinary principle, that of historicism. And yet built into this Indological stance is a contradiction, due to the huge extra-academic importance in the present of Sanskrit texts like the Mahābhārata.

In 1942, the founding editor of the Poona edition, V.S. Sukthankar, delivered a series of seminal lectures, ‘On the Meaning of the Mahābhārata,’ that is representative of the quandary. Sukthankar proposed a meaning for the epic working from within the text itself. He did not rely on the commentators, epitomizers, poets, or literary theorists, yet in ruling out possibilities he did use as an argument the brute fact of the importance of the Mahābhārata to the Indian people. The idea of the Mahābhārata as India’s national epic whispers through the twentieth century scholarship, and yet its popularity in the present is neither an automatic result of its antiquity nor an accident of modernity.

The text was composed to create a remembered past. Over time its transmitters adjusted that memory and the text itself as they performed it, codified it, and used it as a point of departure. Survivals of this process are abundant in the Mahabharata’s poetic and dramatic recreations and occasional pieces, and especially in its ancillary literature: its commentaries, its versified summaries, its indices, and its ‘satellite texts,’ that is, marginal verses and other materials, some of which crept into the body of the epic over time.

If for nothing else, the history of the reception of the itihasa of the Bhārata clan through this material can serve as a way to confirm or disconfirm historical claims about the epic’s meaning, either as invented or as original, especially when the claims are presented as justiciable only by experts, or when the claims pretend to speak for a collective indigenous understanding that is inaccessible to those not native to the culture. Special reference will be made to episodes with elephants, either actual or imaginary, and to the Arthaśāstra.

If you are a person with a disability who requires an accommodation to attend this event, please reach out to us at least 2 weeks in advance of this event. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

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Lecture / Discussion Fri, 16 Aug 2019 08:14:12 -0400 2019-09-20T16:30:00-04:00 2019-09-20T18:00:00-04:00 Weiser Hall Center for South Asian Studies Lecture / Discussion Christopher Minkowski, Boden Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Oxford
India’s Religious Traditions (October 2, 2019 10:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/64578 64578-16388947@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, October 2, 2019 10:00am
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (50+)

India is home to the ancient religious traditions, Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism. They differ significantly from Abrahamic religions on the idea of Divinity, soul, and afterlife. They have evolved over time and are open to further interpretations in the future. The lectures for those 50 and over will include their philosophies, historical evolution, and their role in the contemporary socio-political landscape. Instructor Venkat Lakshminarayanan grew up in India and is a follower of Hindu tradition. Sessions will meet Wednesdays from 10-11:30 am from October 2 through November 27 (no class on October 9).

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Class / Instruction Wed, 24 Jul 2019 16:25:05 -0400 2019-10-02T10:00:00-04:00 2019-10-02T11:30:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (50+) Class / Instruction OLLI Study Groups
CSAS Summer in South Asia Fellowship Symposium (October 4, 2019 4:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/65322 65322-16571516@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, October 4, 2019 4:30pm
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Center for South Asian Studies

Ten undergraduate students were selected to be 2019 Summer in South Asia Fellows. Fellows designed, implemented, and enacted their proposals for their summers in India. At the symposium, students will share their experiences in India, drawing from their internships, research, and interactions with the culture.

Meet the fellows here: sisa.ii.lsa.umich.edu/

The symposium will be followed by a reception.

If you are a person with a disability who requires an accommodation to attend this event, please reach out to us at least 2 weeks in advance of this event. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

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Conference / Symposium Fri, 16 Aug 2019 08:38:01 -0400 2019-10-04T16:30:00-04:00 2019-10-04T19:30:00-04:00 Weiser Hall Center for South Asian Studies Conference / Symposium CSAS Summer in South Asia Fellowship Symposium
Strengthening Democracy: corruption and the water crisis in India (October 4, 2019 6:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/67827 67827-16958324@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, October 4, 2019 6:00pm
Location: Dana Natural Resources Building
Organized By: Association for India's Development - Ann Arbor

Jayaram Venkatesan is the cofounder of Arappor Iyakkam (Tamil for "People's association for non-violent struggle"), a citizens movement in Tamil Nadu, India.

Jayaram will be discussing Arappor’s fight against corruption and the recent Chennai water crisis.

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Presentation Tue, 01 Oct 2019 09:02:39 -0400 2019-10-04T18:00:00-04:00 2019-10-04T19:00:00-04:00 Dana Natural Resources Building Association for India's Development - Ann Arbor Presentation DANA 1024, 6-7pm
CWPS Faculty Lecture | Nachiket Chanchani (October 8, 2019 6:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/67913 67913-16966887@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Tuesday, October 8, 2019 6:00pm
Location: East Quadrangle
Organized By: Center for World Performance Studies

Tuesday, October 8, 2019
6:00pm-7:30pm
East Quad Keene Theater
Free & Open to the public

Drawing on archival research and fieldwork, this talk will explore how B.K.S.Iyengar, (1918-2014) widely acclaimed as a man instrumental in bringing postural yoga to the West, came to understand yoga as an art and see himself as an artist.

The Center for World Performance Studies Faculty Lecture Series features our Faculty Fellows and visiting scholars and practitioners in the fields of ethnography and performance. Designed to create an informal and intimate setting for intellectual exchange among students, scholars, and the community, faculty are invited to present their work in an interactive and performative fashion.

If you are a person with a disability who requires an accommodation to participate in this event, please contact the Center for World Performance Studies, at 734-936-2777. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the University to arrange.

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Lecture / Discussion Wed, 02 Oct 2019 09:23:20 -0400 2019-10-08T18:00:00-04:00 2019-10-08T19:30:00-04:00 East Quadrangle Center for World Performance Studies Lecture / Discussion Photo credit: ©RIMYI Archives, Pune.
CGIS Study Abroad Fair (October 10, 2019 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/64876 64876-16483057@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, October 10, 2019 12:00pm
Location: Michigan League
Organized By: Center for Global and Intercultural Study

Learn about 140 programs in over 50 countries, ask about U-M faculty-led programs, and figure out which program can help satisfy your major/minor requirements. CGIS has programs ranging from 3 weeks to an academic year! Meet with CGIS advisors, staff from the Office of Financial Aid and the LSA Scholarship Office, CGIS
Alumni, and other on-campus offices who can help you select a program that works best for you.

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Fair / Festival Thu, 15 Aug 2019 13:41:18 -0400 2019-10-10T12:00:00-04:00 2019-10-10T16:00:00-04:00 Michigan League Center for Global and Intercultural Study Fair / Festival PHOTO
CSAS Lecture Series | Of Commodities and Frontiers: Looking for "Capitalism" on the Edges of Britain’s Indian Colonies (October 11, 2019 4:30pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/64847 64847-16460999@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, October 11, 2019 4:30pm
Location: Weiser Hall
Organized By: Center for South Asian Studies

In a longer project called The Postcolonial Commons, I am interested in the emergence of fluid political subjectivities around questions of defending existing commons, and creating new ones, in two regions of India: of small-scale fishers in coastal Kerala, and small farmers in the Garhwal region of present-day Uttarakhand state. I am in conversation with strands of contemporary political theory (represented, among others, by Hardt and Negri, Federici, de Angelis, Zizek, and Bauwens) that posit a future organised around ‘the commons’. However, while these writings are futuristic, I suggest that they have an underpinning narrative of the transition from the ‘pre-capitalist commons’ to the ‘commons unmade through capitalism’, which has implications for the political imaginaries outlined in their works. I challenge their orthodox account of this transition with drawing on writings on ‘postcolonial capitalism’, including my own recent work.

For this seminar, I offer two sections of the ‘historical’ part of the larger project: a discussion of the historiographical challenges in reconstructing ‘the pre-capitalist commons’ and the transitions it undergoes ‘under capitalism’ in relation to Kerala fisheries and Garhwali forests, and the limits of the ‘commodity frontiers’ approach to narrate this process. Among other things, the very nature of ‘rule’, and the problems of establishing it in these ‘unruly’ spaces, has a bearing on the sources – rather, the lack thereof – on which an account of such a process can be reconstituted. Accounts are few, and the reliability of some sources is uncertain, for much of the period of early colonial conquest. And what accounts there are do not point to the transformation of fish or forest into ‘commodities’ until relatively recently. Nor are capitalist production relations visible in any meaningful sense. The conditions for fish and forests becoming ‘commodities’, and for the emergence of capitalism in these sectors, come from a number of scientific, technological and other governmental innovations under late-colonial and early-postcolonial developmentalism. I conclude by identifying the implications of my account for radical political theory of the commons.

Subir Sinha studied History at the University of Delhi (BA) and Political Science at Northwestern University (MS, PhD), and has taught at Northwestern University and the University of Vermont. His research interests are institutional change, sustainable development, social movements, state-society relations in development, and South Asian politics, with a current focus on decentralised development in India, early postcolonial planning, and on the global fishworkers' movement.

If you are a person with a disability who requires an accommodation to attend this event, please reach out to us at least 2 weeks in advance of this event. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

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Lecture / Discussion Fri, 02 Aug 2019 16:10:07 -0400 2019-10-11T16:30:00-04:00 2019-10-11T18:00:00-04:00 Weiser Hall Center for South Asian Studies Lecture / Discussion Subir Sinha, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London
Dismantling Casteism & Racism: Symposium (October 12, 2019 10:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/63434 63434-15694221@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Saturday, October 12, 2019 10:00am
Location: Michigan League
Organized By: Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies

Please note registering for this event is now closed.

The Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies (A/PIA) Program at the University of Michigan & the Ambedkar Association of North America have co-organized a symposium to address the theme “Dismantling Casteism and Racism.” The symposium will examine the contemporary and historical intersections between anti-racist and anti-caste struggles in South Asia and the U.S.

Vandenberg Room
Michigan League, 911 N. University, Ann Arbor
Light lunch will be provided
Saturday: October 12, 2019

Featured Speakers
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd, Ph.D. is an award-winning scholar, political theorist, and one of the most prominent anti-caste activists and intellectuals in India. He is currently the director of the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy at Maulana Azad National Urdu University. Prof. Shepherd’s most recent publications include Turning the Pot, Tilling the Land: Dignity of Labour in Our Times (with co-writer Durgabai Vyam, 2007) and a memoir titled From a Shepherd Boy to an Intellectual (2019).

Thenmozhi Soundararajan is a U.S.-based filmmaker, transmedia artist, and Dalit rights activist. She is the founder of Equality Labs, an organization that uses community research, socially engaged art, and technology to end the oppression of caste apartheid, Islamophobia, white supremacy, and religious intolerance. In 2015, Soundararajan was was a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation fellow, during which time she helped curate #DalitWomenFight, a transmedia project and activist movement.

Ronald E. Hall, Ph.D. is Professor of Social Work at Michigan State University. His research specializations includes a focus on intraracial racism, colorism, caste, and mental health. His publications include The Color Complex: The Politics of Skin Color Among African Americans (edited), and The Scientific Fallacy and Political Misuse of the Concept of Race.

Ankita Nikalje is a Doctoral Student in the Counseling Psychology program at the College of Education at Purdue. Her research focuses on the continued psychological impacts of colonization in South Asian populations, and seeks to understand how historical oppression and current experiences of racism impact mental and physical health.

Gaurav Pathania, Ph.D. is a sociologist and currently teaches at The George Washington University at Washington DC. His current project explores Dalits and Black activism in the US. In 2018, he published his first book, The University as a Site of Resistance: Identity and Student Politics" with Oxford University Press.


Panel Moderator
Manan Desai, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies and the Department of American Culture at the University of Michigan. He also serves on the academic council of the South Asian American Digital Archive.


Co-sponsored by the Department of American Culture, Department of Asian Languages & Cultures, Center for South Asian Studies, Barger Leadership Program, Department of History, Department of English Language & Literature, and Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Community sponsorship from Periyar Ambedkar Study Circle, Association for India’s Development, and American Federation of Muslims of Indian Origin.

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Lecture / Discussion Fri, 11 Oct 2019 09:40:33 -0400 2019-10-12T10:00:00-04:00 2019-10-12T15:00:00-04:00 Michigan League Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies Lecture / Discussion Poster
Meditation and Spiritual Life (October 14, 2019 6:15pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/68342 68342-17054451@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, October 14, 2019 6:15pm
Location: Pierpont Commons
Organized By: Vedanta Study Circle at University of Michigan

Swami Yogatmananda of Vedanta Society of Providence, RI would be giving a talk on 'Meditation and Spiritual Life'. All are welcome. This event is free of charge and RSVPs are not required.

About the speaker: Born in 1953 in Karnataka state (India), Swami Yogatmananda joined Ramakrishna Order in 1976. He received his monastic vows in 1986. After serving at Ramakrishna Math at Nagpur (Maharashtra state, India) for 20 years, he was posted as the Head of Ramakrishna Mission, Shillong, (Meghalaya state, India). He came to United States in the summer of 2001 as the Minister of the Vedanta Society of Providence.

Swami Yogatmananda’s present responsibilities include conducting Sunday service, weekly study classes and organizing spiritual retreats. He is invited to preach Vedanta at different places in the United States. He also serves as the Hindu Religious Affiliate at the Brown University, Providence, RI and the Hindu Chaplain at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, MA.

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Lecture / Discussion Sat, 12 Oct 2019 18:02:46 -0400 2019-10-14T18:15:00-04:00 2019-10-14T19:30:00-04:00 Pierpont Commons Vedanta Study Circle at University of Michigan Lecture / Discussion Swami Yogatmananda_Flier
Vedanta Discourse (October 14, 2019 6:15pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/68069 68069-16994910@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, October 14, 2019 6:15pm
Location: Pierpont Commons
Organized By: Vedanta Study Circle

We welcome you to attend Vedanta Discourse by Swami Yogatmananda, Minister in Charge, Vedanta Society of Providence, RI.

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Lecture / Discussion Sat, 05 Oct 2019 12:50:45 -0400 2019-10-14T18:15:00-04:00 2019-10-14T19:45:00-04:00 Pierpont Commons Vedanta Study Circle Lecture / Discussion October 14, 2019 talk by Swami Yogatmananda