RSS FeedUpcoming EventsSinging Kabir | Prahlad Singh Tipanya and his ensemble sing the poetry of Kabir, March 19https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/239648-singing-kabir-prahlad-singh-tipanya-and-his-ensemble-

Prahlad Singh Tipanya and his ensemble sing the poetry of Kabir, the great iconoclastic mystic of 15th-century North India, in the vigorous and joyful folk style of Madhya Pradesh’s Malwa region.

Onstage translation of lyrics offered by Prof. Linda Hess, Senior Lecturer Emerita in Religious Studies, Stanford University.

Nora Koa, Lecturer of Hindi, Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, UC Berkeley

Prahlad-ji is a locally, nationally, and internationally acclaimed folk singer from Lunyakhedi, a small village in Ujjain District, Madhya Pradesh. He is renowned for his singing and interpretation of Kabir and other Hindi poets associated with nirgun-bhakti–devotion to a God or ultimate reality beyond word and form. Kabir is famous for both his profound mystical insight and his sharp social commentary. His voice is often invoked as inspiring communal harmony and social equality.

Among Prahlad-ji’s many honors is the prestigious Padma Shri award given by the Government of India. He has delighted audiences in the USA on various visits since 2003. He is a featured figure in the book Bodiesof Song: Kabir Oral Traditions and Performative Worlds in North India (Oxford University Press, 2015) by Linda Hess. Linda will be traveling with the group and offering onstage translation

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PARKING INFORMATION
Please note that parking is not always easily available in Berkeley. Take public transportation if possible or arrive early to secure your spot.

Event is FREE and OPEN to the public.

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If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) or information about campus mobility access features in order to fully participate in this event, please contact Puneeta Kala at pkala@berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days in advance of the event.

https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/239648-singing-kabir-prahlad-singh-tipanya-and-his-ensemble-
[On Zoom] Amrita Jhaveri + Manjari Sihare-Sutin | Vital Love: Collectors Speak Series, March 21https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/229483-on-zoom-amrita-jhaveri-manjari-sihare-sutin-vital-lov

Amrita Jhaveri, Co-Founder of Jhaveri Contemporary, in conversation with Manjari Sihare-Sutin, Vice President and Head of Sale, Modern and Contemporary South Asian Art at Sotheby’s.

Event moderated by Atreyee Gupta, Assistant Professor of Global Modern Art and South and Southeast Asian Art in the History of Art Department at UC Berkeley. 

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  • Day: Thu, March 21, 2024
  • Time: 9 am PST | Calculate your local time here.
  • Register on Zoom HERE 
  • This event will be live streamed on SAAI’s FB page - SAAIatUCBerkeley.

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SPEAKER BIO: Amrita Jhaveri has been working in the field of Modern and Contemporary Indian art since 1993. Having established Christie’s presence in India in the mid-1990s, she moved to London in 2000 and began to build her private collection of art from which she has loaned to museums worldwide. She has worked as an independent advisor, creating and managing private and corporate art collections; ambitious artist’s projects and large-scale commissions. In 2010, she established Jhaveri Contemporary, a gallery of Modern and Contemporary art, in Mumbai. Her research interests have resulted in exhibitions such as Thinking Tantra and South Asian Modernists, 1953- 63, and she is the author of 101: A Guide to 101 Modern and Contemporary Indian Artists.

Manjari Sihare-Sutin joined the Modern and Contemporary South Asian Department at Sotheby’s in 2015. Throughout her tenure, Sihare-Sutin has consistently innovated, focusing her curatorial and sales expertise to expand the global reach of modern and contemporary South Asian art.

Sihare-Sutin’s sales are comprehensive explorations of art in the region, bringing both known and fresh artists to market with exceptional results. From March 2022 to March 2023, the department achieved a total of 40 world auction records. In addition to major biannual sales, Sihare-Sutin spearheaded the department’s first online auction in 2017, A Lyrical Line: Paintings & Drawings by Francis Newton Souza, and two selling exhibitions, The Great Within: Photographs of India And The British Raj In The 19th Century in 2018 and Crafting Geometry: Abstract Art from South and West Asia in 2020.

Sihare-Sutin holds two graduate degrees, a master’s degree in art history from the National Museum Institute, New Delhi and a master’s degree in Visual Arts Administration from New York University, New York.

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The South Asia Art Initiative at the University of California, Berkeley promotes research-based conversations and collaborations around the arts of South Asia + its diasporas from the ancient period to the now. To read more about the Initiative and help support its various fundraising goals, please click HERE.
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Event made possible with the support of the Sarah Kailath Chair of India Studies

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Vasugi Kailasam | The Progressive Tamil novel in South Asia, March 21https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/229769-vasugi-kailasam-the-progressive-tamil-novel-in-south-

The Institute and Tamil@Berkeley, a campaign to broaden and deepen Tamil related research, teaching and programming at UC Berkeley, invite you for a lecture by
Vasugi Kailasam, Assistant Professor of Tamil Language and Literature in the Department of South & Southeast Asian Studies, UC Berkeley. 

Event moderated by Munis D. Faruqui, Director, Institute for South Asia Studies; Sarah Kailath Chair of India Studies; Associate Professor, South & South East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley

ABSTRACT: 

This presentation will examine the evolution of Tamil progressive novels in Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka from the 1950s to the 1980s, emphasizing their distinctive development within South Asia. Although the Progressive Writers’ Association was established in India in 1936, the progressive movement in Tamil literature began significantly later, gaining traction in the 1950s. This talk will discuss how this belated yet impactful emergence of progressive writing, known as “muṟpōkku eḻuttu”, influenced by distinct political and literary factors in Tamil Nadu and the Tamil-speaking areas of Sri Lanka, helped shape the contours of the modern Tamil novel.

The discussion will analyze two significant novels of Tamil Progressive writing: Pañcum Paciyum (1953) by Indian Tamil writer, T.M.C. Raghunathan and Pañcamar (1972) by Sri Lankan Tamil writer, K. Daniel. The analysis will consider three key elements: (1) the incorporation of a realist style influenced by ideological and social class perspectives, (2) the portrayal of labor and caste within Tamil progressive narratives, and (3) the profound influence of international literary trends, particularly Soviet realism as exemplified in Maxim Gorky’s widely translated, iconic novel Mother (1906).

SPEAKER BIO

Vasugi Kailasam is an Assistant Professor (Tamil Studies) in the Department of South & Southeast Asian Studies at UC Berkeley. Her research concerns global Tamil literatures, postcolonial literature and filmic and digital cultures of contemporary South Asia and its diasporas. Specifically, her work examines narrative forms and its connections to South Asian cultural identity formations, race, and ethnic politics. Before arriving at UC Berkeley, Professor Kailasam was a lecturer of Tamil Studies at the South Asian Studies Programme (SASP) in the National University of Singapore from 2015- 2019.

Professor Kailasam’s first book project, The Tamil realist novel in South and Southeast Asia, investigates the growth and evolution of the postcolonial Tamil realist novel produced in India, Sri Lanka, and the Southeast Asian countries of Singapore and Malaysia from the 1940s to the 1980s. This research has been funded by grants from The Townsend Center of the Humanities, Humanities Research Fellowship (funded by the Andrew W. Mellon grant), Hellman Society of Fellows and an AIIS - NEH senior fellowship.


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Event made possible with the support of the Sarah Kailath Chair of India Studies

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https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/229769-vasugi-kailasam-the-progressive-tamil-novel-in-south-
T.V. Paul | The Unfinished Quest: India’s Search for Major Power Status from Nehru to Modi, April 2https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/237109-tv-paul-the-unfinished-quest-indias-search-for-major-

A talk by T.V. Paul, James McGill Professor of International Relations in the department of Political Science at McGill University, on his new book, The Unfinished Quest: India’s Search for Major Power Status from Nehru to Modi, that draws on three decades of data on India’s economic and military growth to assess India’s achievements and shortcomings in comparison with others, especially China.

Event moderated by Vinod K. Aggarwal, Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Director, Berkeley APEC Study Center.

About the Book: Along with the meteoric rise of China, there has been much interest in the emergence of India as a rising power. The rapidly developing US-China rivalry gives India an added importance in world politics today. Further, the strengthening of Hindu nationalism under Narendra Modi includes using international status enhancement as a tool in domestic political contestation. This talk, based on a forthcoming book, draws on three decades of data on India’s economic and military growth to assess India’s achievements and shortcomings in comparison with others, especially China. The research pays particular attention to a status perspective, which is often missing in many popular books on India’s rise. While in its 75-year existence as an independent state, India has achieved much in fulfilling the dreams of Nehru and his successors in obtaining global status, the quest is still unfinished. Why have India and its leadership believed that the country has a destiny to rise as a global power? What does the future hold for India’s status elevation?

About the Author: T.V. Paul is James McGill Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science at McGill University, Montreal, Canada, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is a former President of International Studies Association (ISA) and the Founding Director of the Global Research Network on Peaceful Change (GRENPEC). Paul is the author or editor of 23 books and over 80 scholarly articles/book chapters in the fields of International Relations, International Security, and South Asia, including The Unfinished Quest: India’s Search for Major Power Status from Nehru to Modi (Oxford University Press, forthcoming, 2024).

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PARKING INFORMATION
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Event is FREE and OPEN to the public.

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If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) or information about campus mobility access features in order to fully participate in this event, please contact Puneeta Kala at pkala@berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days in advance of the event.

https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/237109-tv-paul-the-unfinished-quest-indias-search-for-major-
Sudipta Sen | Revisiting Ganges: The Many Pasts of an Indian River, April 2https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/229490-sudipta-sen-revisiting-gangesthe-many-pasts-of-an-ind

A talk by Sudipta Sen, Professor of History and Middle East/South Asia Studies, UC Davis, on his new book, Ganges: The Many Pasts of an Indian River, a sweeping, interdisciplinary history of the world’s third-largest river, a potent symbol across South Asia and the Hindu diaspora.

Event moderated by Munis D. Faruqui, Director, Institute for South Asia Studies; Sarah Kailath Chair of India Studies; Associate Professor, South & South East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley.

About the Book: Originating in the Himalayas and flowing into the Bay of Bengal, the Ganges is India’s most important and sacred river. In this unprecedented work, historian Sudipta Sen tells the story of the Ganges, from the communities that arose on its banks to the merchants that navigated its waters, and the way it came to occupy center stage in the history and culture of the subcontinent.

Sen begins his chronicle in prehistoric India, tracing the river’s first settlers, its myths of origin in the Hindu tradition, and its significance during the ascendancy of popular Buddhism. In the following centuries, Indian empires, Central Asian regimes, European merchants, the British Empire, and the Indian nation-state all shaped the identity and ecology of the river. Weaving together geography, environmental politics, and religious history, Sen offers in this lavishly illustrated volume a remarkable portrait of one of the world’s largest and most densely populated river basins.

About the Author: Sudipta Sen is a Professor of History at the University of California, Davis. His work has focused on the early colonial history of British India. He is the author of two books: Empire of Free Trade: The English East India Company and the Making of the Colonial Marketplace (Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998) and Distant Sovereignty: National Imperialism and the Origins of British India (London: Routledge, 2002). He is currently working on two book-length manuscripts. The first, Ganga: Many Pasts of an Indian River (New Haven: Yale University Press; forthcoming), is an exploration of the idea of a cosmic, universal river at the interstices of myth, historical geography and ecology, and the other is a longer-term project entitled Empire of Law and Order: Crime, Punishment and Justice in Early British India, 1770-1830.Read more about Sudipta Sen’s research and activities.

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Please note that parking is not always easily available in Berkeley. Take public transportation if possible or arrive early to secure your spot.

Event is FREE and OPEN to the public.

_________________

If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) or information about campus mobility access features in order to fully participate in this event, please contact Puneeta Kala at pkala@berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days in advance of the event.

https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/229490-sudipta-sen-revisiting-gangesthe-many-pasts-of-an-ind
Šumit Ganguly & Marianne Riddervold | Comparing EU and India Perspectives on Russia’s War in Ukraine, April 4https://events.berkeley.edu/live/events/237009-umit-ganguly-marianne-riddervold-comparing-eu-and-ind

As Russia’s war in Ukraine nears the two year milestone, distinctive approaches between governments in the Global North and Global South have come into focus. On the one hand, the EU has voiced strong rebuke of the Russian invasion, embargoed trade and diplomatic relations in an effort to isolate Russia while extending military aid and EU membership to Ukraine. On the other hand, India has maintained a deafening silence on the Russian invasion of Ukraine largely because of its acute dependence on Russian weaponry and to a lesser degree, Russian petroleum. Some within India’s foreign policy establishment also believe that avoiding public criticism of Russia might prevent it from aligning too closely with the People’s Republic of China, India’s long-term adversary. Join us for a discussion with Professor Marianne Riddervold and Professor Sumit Ganguly to explore the geopolitical interests at stake in EU and India’s stances on Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Šumit Ganguly is a Distinguished Professor of Political Science and holds the Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilizations at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is the author, co-author editor or co-editor of over twenty books on contemporary South Asian politics. His most recent book with Manjeet Pardesi and William R. Thompson is, The Sino-Indian Rivalry: Implications for Global Order. (Cambridge University Press, 2023) Professor Ganguly is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Marianne Riddervold is Professor of Political Science at Innlandet University Norway, research professor at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, and a senior fellow at the Institute of European Studies at UC Berkeley. She has published extensively on European integration, European foreign and security policy, EU crises, transatlantic relations and international relations in the global commons. Recent publications include special issues in International Relations and Politics and Governance (with Akasemi Newsome), and the Palgrave Handbook on EU crises (with Akasemi Newsome and Jarle Trondal).

If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) or information about campus mobility access features in order to fully participate in this event, please contact Ray Savord at rsavord@berkeley.edu or (510) 642-4555 with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days before the event.

/live/events/237009-umit-ganguly-marianne-riddervold-comparing-eu-and-ind
Bashabi Fraser | The Primacy of Creativity in Rabindranath Tagore, April 4https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/236729-bashabi-fraser-the-primacy-of-creativity-in-rabindran

The Institute for South Asia Studies and the Tagore Program on Literature, Culture and Philosophy at UC Berkeley and are privileged to have Bashabi Fraser, the Director of the Scottish Centre of Tagore Studies at Edinburgh Napier University, deliver our third Maya Mitra Das Annual Lecture on Tagore at UC Berkeley.

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SPEAKER BIO

Bashabi Fraser CBE, HonFASL is an award winning poet, children’s writer, editor and academic. She is the recipient of a CBE (2021 The Queen’s New Year Honours) for Education (her academic work), culture (poetry) and cultural integration (her bridge building projects linking Scotland and India) and was made Honorary Fellow of the Association of Scottish Studies in 2022. She has been declared Outstanding Woman of Scotland by Saltire Society in 2015.

Bashabi is Professor Emerita of English and Creative Writing, Edinburgh Napier University and Founder Director of Scottish Centre of Tagore Studies (ScoTs). She is also an Honorary Fellow, Centre for South Asian Studies, University of Edinburgh, Honorary Fellow of the Association of Scottish Literary Studies (ASLS), Scotland and a Royal Literary Fund Fellow. She is the Chief Editor of the academic and creative peer-reviewed international e-journal, Gitanjali and Beyond and on the Editorial Board of several international peer-reviewed journals and is on the Editorial Board of Writers Mosaic, a Royal Literary Fund division..

Her work traverses continents in transnational literary projects. She has authored and edited 25 books, published several articles articles and chapters in academic and creative books/journals and has been widely anthologized as a poet. Her recent publications include Habitat (2023), Lakshmi’s Footprints and Paisely Patterns: Perspectives on Scoto-Indian Literary and Cultural Interrelations (2023), The Patient Dignity (2021) and Rabindranath Tagore (2019).

Her other recent awards include Swami Vivekananda University, India’s Vivek Jyoti Sanman, 2023, the UK Bengali Convention (UKBC) Lifetime Achievement Award, 2022, the Dr Maheswar Neog IPPL Award for Poetry, 2022; Kavi Salam from Poetry Paradigm and Voice of the Republic in India in 2019; the Word Masala Foundation Award for Excellence in Poetry in 2017, Special Felicitation as a Poet on International Women’s Day by Public Relations Society of India, March 2017, Rabindra Bharati Society Honour, 2014, Women Empowered: Arts and Culture Award in 2010 and the AIO Prize for Literary Services in Scotland in 2009.

Her other grants and funding awards include the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, International Senior Research Fellow ( 2016-17), UK-India Educational Research Initiatives (UKIERI) grant, funded jointly by the British Council and the University Grants Commission (UGC), India (2015-2017), Royal Literary Fund Fellow (2018-2020, 2012-2015), Carnegie Research Grant (2008), Edinburgh Napier University Research Grant (2008), British Council Consultancy (2008-2009), Scottish Arts Council Publication Grant (2008), Scottish Arts Council Writer’s Grant with Edinburgh Puppet Lab (2003-4), EMMA Best Book Award, Runner up for Rainbow World (2003-4), Moray Foundation Grant, University of Edinburgh (2001 and 2000), Scottish Arts Council Literature Grant, for anthology (2000), British Academy Research Grant (1999-2000), University Grants Commission of India Teacher Fellowship, , Sept 1984-Feb 1988.

Bashabi has been an Adjudicator for several national and international creative writing competitions. Recently, she has been a Judge for the Non-Fiction Book Prize and the Scottish National Book of the Year Award for Saltire Society, Scotland (2022) and the Kavya Prize, sponsored by Glasgow University (2022).

Bashabi is Honorary Vice President of the Association of Scottish Literary Studies (ASLS), an executive committee member of Scottish PEN, and Writers at Risk and Writers for Peace Committees (Scotland), a Trustee of Patrick Geddes Trust and the Kolkata Scottish Heritage Trust, Patron of the Federation of Writers (Scotland). She is the founder and President of the Advisory Board of the Intercultural Poetry and Performance Library (IPPL) in Kolkata; she is on the Advisory Board of the V&A Museum in Dundee and the Indian Association of Scottish Studies, led by Bankura University. Bashabi is on the Editorial Board of several international peer-reviewed journals. She lives in Edinburgh with her husband, Neil Fraser.

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Launched in Fall 2019, and housed in the Institute for South Asia Studies, the Tagore Program on Literature, Culture and Philosophy at UC Berkeley, is the first of its kind in the US. Designed to showcase the life and legacy of Rabindranath Tagore, the program sponsors talks and workshops on Tagore, as well as semester-long visiting professorships in Tagore Studies at UC Berkeley. Read more about the program HERE.
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Event is FREE and OPEN to the public.

https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/236729-bashabi-fraser-the-primacy-of-creativity-in-rabindran
Philip Lutgendorf | Ending with a Crow: Bhushundi in the Rāmcaritmānas of Tulsidas, April 5https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/230003-philip-lutgendorf-ending-with-a-crow-bhushundi-in-the

The Institute for South Asia Studies (ISAS) at UC Berkeley in collaboration with the Vedanta Society Berkeley (VSB) are proud to announce the 3rd ISAS-VSB Lecture on Religion in the Modern World by Prof. Philip Lutgendorf, Professor of Hindi and Modern Indian Studies at the University of Iowa.

Event moderated by Robert P. Goldman, Professor of the Graduate School and Catherine and William L. Magistretti Distinguished Professor of Sanskrit Emeritus

ABSTRACT:

The poet-saint Tulsidas’s immensely popular retelling of the Ramayana saga, Rāmcaritmānas (ca. 1574 AD), is structured as an allegorical Himalayan sacred lake symmetrically bounded by four seven-tiered ghats. Each ghat represents the “viewpoint” or darśana of a narrator who regularly appears within the text, expounding to an eager listener who sometimes interrupts to ask questions. This multivocality seems to celebrate that of the Ramayana tradition even as it anticipates the ongoing performance and reinterpretation of the Mānas itself. The narrators (in order of appearance) are the human author Tulsidas, the Vedic sage Yajnavalkya, the god Shiva, and a crow named Bhushuṇḍi. Whereas the first three are either human or (in Shiva’s case) divine-anthropomorphic, the final one (who takes center stage for more than half of the final sub-book, which includes his own lengthy autobiography) is in avian form—and he is not just any bird, but one traditionally regarded in Hindu lore as impure and inauspicious.

Why did the poet choose this unusual figure to conclude his epic narrative and to deliver, in effect, the “last word” on such key Rāmcaritmānas themes as social order, devotional egalitarianism, and the relative merits of nirguṇa (formless) and saguṇa (embodied) understandings of God? On what precursor traditions did Tulsidas draw, and to what extent did he innovate? And how has the quirky persona of Bhushuṇḍi engaged later audiences, including scholarly exegetes and visual artists?

SPEAKER BIO

Philip Lutgendorf taught Hindi and Modern Indian Studies in the Department of Asian and Slavic Languages and Literature for 33 years, retiring in 2018. His book on the performance of the Hindi Ramayana, The Life of a Text (University of California Press, 1991) won the A. K. Coomaraswamy Prize of the Association for Asian Studies. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002-03 for his research on the popular Hindu deity Hanuman, which appeared as Hanuman’s Tale, The Messages of a Divine Monkey (Oxford University Press, 2007). His interests include epic performance traditions, folklore and popular culture, and mass media. He created a website devoted to Indian popular cinema, a.k.a. “Bollywood” (http://www.uiowa.edu/indiancinema/ ). His research on the cultural history of tea drinking in India was supported by a Fulbright-Hays Senior Overseas Research Fellowship (2010-11). He is presently translating the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas as The Epic of Ram, in seven dual-language volumes, for the Murty Classical Library of India/Harvard University Press (http://www.murtylibrary.com/volumes.php ). He served as President of the American Institute of Indian Studies from 2010-2018, and continues serving as Chair of its Board of Trustees (http://www.indiastudies.org/ ).

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About the Lecture Series
The ISAS-VSB Lecture on Religion in the Modern World is an annual lecture series that seeks to invite distinguished scholars of world religions to campus with the aim of improving and diversifying conversations about the role of religion in modern societies. Our first lecture in this series was delivered by Prof. Robert A. F. Thurman, a recognized worldwide authority on religion and spirituality, Asian history, world philosophy, Buddhist science, Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, and H.H. Dalai Lama. Click HERE to read more about the series and to listen to recordings of past lectures.

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PARKING INFORMATION
Please note that parking is not always easily available in Berkeley. Take public transportation if possible or arrive early to secure your spot.

Event is FREE and OPEN to the public.

_____________

If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) or information about campus mobility access features in order to fully participate in this event, please contact Puneeta Kala at pkala@berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days in advance of the event.

https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/230003-philip-lutgendorf-ending-with-a-crow-bhushundi-in-the
Bradley Gardner | Two Years After Sri Lanka’s Historic Default: Lessons Learned and What Comes Next, April 9https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/239649-bradley-gardner-two-years-after-sri-lankas-historic-d

On April 12, 2022, Sri Lanka defaulted on its debt for the first time since independence. In the months before and after the default Sri Lanka faced record inflation, and shortages of fuel, food, and other essential goods. The Aragalaya protest movement that rose in response to the crisis forced former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to step down and flee the country. In March 2023, the IMF approved a $3 billion four-year Extended Fund Facility arrangement for Sri Lanka - the country’s 17th IMF program - which has stabilized the economy. The Sri Lankan government is in the process of implementing reforms that could start a process of sustainable growth, but major economic and political risks remain.

Bradley Gardner, a U.S. diplomat working in Sri Lanka, will discuss how Sri Lanka got to this point and what could come next.

SPEAKER BIO

Bradley Gardner is a U.S. diplomat working in Sri Lanka. Previously, he served in Slovakia and Nepal, and covered Latvia from Washington D.C. Before joining the State Department he worked as a journalist and economic researcher in China and the Czech Republic. His book “China’s Great Migration: How the Poor Built a Prosperous Nation,” was endorsed by Nobel Laureate Christopher Pissardes, and won the Benjamin Franklin Award and Ippy Gold Medal

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For DIRECTIONS to the Institute please enter “Institute for South Asia Studies” in your google maps or click this GOOGLE MAPS LINK.

PARKING INFORMATION
Please note that parking is not always easily available in Berkeley. Take public transportation if possible or arrive early to secure your spot.

Event is FREE and OPEN to the public.

_________________

If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) or information about campus mobility access features in order to fully participate in this event, please contact Puneeta Kala at pkala@berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days in advance of the event.

https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/239649-bradley-gardner-two-years-after-sri-lankas-historic-d
Mirza Taslima Sultana | Trolling in Bangladesh, April 9https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/229668-mirza-taslima-sultana-trolling-in-bangladesh

A talk by Mirza Taslima Sultana, Professor of Anthropology at Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh.

Event moderated by Elora Shehabuddin, Professor of Gender & Women’s Studies and Global Studies and Director, Subir and Malini Chowdhury Center for Bangladesh Studies, UC Berkeley

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Event live streamed on FB at: ChowdhuryCenter atUCBerkeley

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Abstract

The subject of discussion is the researcher’s most current investigation into trolling in Bangladesh. As the nation’s usage of the internet and social media has grown, so has trolling. The number of people trolling celebs and politicians as well as regular people is rising. Bullying and hate speech were prevalent in public areas, including streets, workplaces, and educational facilities. Nonetheless, the situation is quite concerning due to hate speech that is encouraged online. From 2013 to 2016, 30 bloggers and on 25 April 2016, 2 LGBTQ persons were killed. According to Parsa Sanjana Sajid (2020) LGBTQ communities and sex workers initially found the social media spaces liberating but soon found it to be a dangerous terrain because of these killings. LGBTQ peoples, Sex workers and the bloggers were trolled with receiving death and rape threats.Thus, the researcher explores the beginnings online trolling in this talk and identifies many types of trolling through social media research as well as interviewing the individuals who experienced troll, such as trolling that is sponsored by the state (Nyst and Monaco, 2018), trolling that is motivated by gender, and trolling that is based on ethnicity. The study argues that In the post-truth context (Hannan,2018) of Bangladesh the religious extremists threaten the bloggers or it involves gendertrolling (Mantilla, 2013) of celebrities or trolling by bots to the groups raising dissenting voices, all are affecting the formation of public opinion in the cyberspace of Bangladeshi netizens. While the trolls are active in shaping the cyberspace, and the public space according to their respective goals, the research findings are similar to Lacy and Mookherjee’s (2020) study, that is currently in Bangladesh the head of the government could not be trolled on social media and for this many were arrested under the Information and communication Technology act (2006) and Digital Security Act (2018); though in 2023, a new law, Cyber Security Act was employed, those who faced the charges under the previous acts have been facing the trials, sometimes without the specific police charges. The study finds that Bangladeshi individuals are unable to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed freedoms in cyberspace, and in order to silence their voices, prevalent standards are replicated there and expanded to include a wide range of infractions.

About the Speaker

Mirza Taslima is Professor of Anthropology at Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh. She is currently a Fulbright Visiting Scholar in the Department of Gender and Women Studies at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on gender-based trolling, in which she aims to compare the ethnography of trolled people and their agencies between Bangladesh and US contexts. She is conducting an interdisciplinary study in this project to theorize on the formation of the public in cyberspace of Bangladesh and the US and to consider the various expressions of democracy and civil rights. She did her field research in Bangladesh and now is establishing contacts to conduct interviews in the US context.

Dr. Mirza Taslima did her Ph.D. on Childlessness and IVF in Bangladesh at the Center for Gender and Women Studies in Lancaster University, UK.

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Established in 2013 with a generous gift from the Subir & Malini Chowdhury Foundation, The Subir & Malini Chowdhury Center for Bangladesh Studies at UC Berkeley champions the study of Bangladesh’s cultures, peoples and history. The first of its kind in the US, the Center’s mission is to create an innovative model combining research, scholarships, the promotion of art and culture, and the building of ties between institutions in Bangladesh and the University of California.

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For DIRECTIONS to the Institute please enter “Institute for South Asia Studies” in your google maps or click this GOOGLE MAPS LINK.

PARKING INFORMATION
Please note that parking is not always easily available in Berkeley. Take public transportation if possible or arrive early to secure your spot.

Event is FREE and OPEN to the public.

https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/229668-mirza-taslima-sultana-trolling-in-bangladesh
Susmita Basu Majumdar | Asoka and the Afterlives of Asokan Edicts, April 10https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/241805-susmita-basu-majumdar-asoka-and-the-afterlives-of-aso

A talk by Susmita Basu Majumdar, Professor in the Department of Ancient Indian History and Culture, University of Calcutta.

Event moderated by Osmund Bopearachichi, Numata Visiting Professor of Central and South Asian Art, Archaeology, and Numismatics, UC Berkeley.
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Speaker Bio

Professor in the Department of Ancient Indian History and Culture, University of Calcutta, Susmita Basu Majumdar’s specializations are Epigraphy and Numismatics. She also is deeply interested in Cultural history, Religious history and History of Medicine and Surgery. She is also well conversant with ancient languages like Sanskrit and Prakrit.

Prof. Susmita Basu Majumdar has been the recipient of numerous prestigious fellowships and recognitions in the country and abroad. She has been involved in cataloguing coins in the British Museum, Allahabad University Museum and many more collections. She has conducted and framed courses on Epigraphy, Numismatics, Prakrit Language and Grammar in many prestigious institutions.

Her publications include Local Coins of Ancient India: Coins of Malhar (Anjaneri 2000 ), Essays on History of Medicine with Nayana Sharma Mukherjee Mumbai 2013), Kalighat Hoard: The First Gupta Coin Hoard from India (Kolkata 2014), Select Early Historic Inscriptions: Epigraphic Perspectives on the Ancient Past of Chhattisgarh with Shivakant Bajpai Raipur 2015 ), Barabar and Nagarjuni Hills: A Biography of Twin Sites (Patna 2016 ), The Mauryas in Karnataka (Kolkata 2016), Money and Money Matters in Pre Modern South Asia with S.K.Bose (New Delhi 2019), From Hindu Kush to Salt Range: Mauryan, Indo-Greek and Indo-Scythian Coin Hoards (Kolkata 2020), Mahasthan Record Revisited: Querying the Empire from a Regional Perspective (New Delhi 2023). She has published more than 50 articles in reputed journals and edited volumes.
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Event made possible with the support of the Sarah Kailath Chair of India Studies

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PARKING INFORMATION
Please note that parking is not always easily available in Berkeley. Take public transportation if possible or arrive early to secure your spot.

Event is FREE and OPEN to the public.

_________________

If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) or information about campus mobility access features in order to fully participate in this event, please contact Puneeta Kala at pkala@berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days in advance of the event.

https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/241805-susmita-basu-majumdar-asoka-and-the-afterlives-of-aso
CANCELED: Suchitra Vijayan & Francesca Recchia | How Long Can The Moon Be Caged? Voices of Indian Political Prisoners, April 10https://events.berkeley.edu/live/events/229076-how-long-can-the-moon-be-caged-crg-forum-series

CRG’s Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Initiative presents:
HOW LONG CAN THE MOON BE CAGED?
with Suchitra Vijayan & Francesca Recchia (Authors of How Long Can the Moon Be Caged? Voices of Indian Political Prisoners (Pluto Press))

in conversation with
Angana P. Chatterji
Founding Co-Chair, Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights, Center for Race and Gender and Research Anthropologist, UC Berkeley

 

*If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) to fully participate in this event, please contact Ariana Ceja at centerrg@berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days in advance of the event.

/live/events/229076-how-long-can-the-moon-be-caged-crg-forum-series
Zahra Hayat & Shozab Raza | The S. S. Pirzada Lectures on Pakistan, April 11https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/229489-zahra-hayat-shozab-raza-the-s-s-pirzada-lectures-on-p

The S. S. Pirzada Lectures on Pakistan by Dr. Zahra Hayat (UC Berkeley) and Dr. Shozab Raza (University of Toronto).

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This event will be live streamed on the Institute’s FB page: ISASatUCBerkeley
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  • ZAHRA HAYAT

    DISSERTATION TITLE: The Scandal of Access: Pharmaceuticals in Pakistan (University of California Berkeley, 2022)

    DISSERTATION ABSTRACT: Pakistan has among the world’s lowest drug prices, and Western multinationals rarely apply for drug patents there. Yet, despite the absence of these quintessential barriers to access, Pakistanis confront some of the highest global burdens of treatable yet untreated diseases, perpetual shortages of lifesaving drugs, and an epidemic of unpalliated pain at the end of life due to morphine scarcity. This paradox, devastating in its consequences, lies at the heart of this dissertation.

    The dissertation argues that to understand the paradoxes of access in Pakistan, we must radically rethink the relationships between access and its determinants. Specifically, it demonstrates the counterintuitive relationship between access and price, showing how prices that are too low can deprive people of medicines; between access and intellectual property, showing how drug patents can exert powerful effects even in places where they do not exist—what I call “spectral property”; and between access and quality, demonstrating that despite the proliferation of several competing brands of the ‘same’ drug in Pakistani markets, these versions are in fact so different from one another that consumers cannot know what they are ingesting. The dissertation develops an analytic of ‘scandal’, departing from familiar tropes of crisis and state failure to voice an ethical-political critique of how specific instruments of global capitalism articulate with national regulatory and legal systems to hinder access in counterintuitive ways.

    ZAHRA HAYAT is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Prior to earning her Ph.D. at UC Berkeley, she studied law at Oxford University (as a Rhodes Scholar) and Yale Law School. She practiced law for four years in California, working on improved access to mental health care for foster youth, as well as on intellectual property. She has been awarded a postdoctoral fellowship at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies and will be in residence at Harvard from 2024-26.

  • SHOZAB RAZA

    DISSERTATION TITLE: Theory from the Trenches: Revolutionary Decolonization on Pakistan’s Landed Estates (University of Toronto, 2022)

    DISSERTATION ABSTRACT: This dissertation explores how peasant revolutionaries in Pakistan’s South Punjab region creatively theorized to accelerate a revolutionary movement to remake the country and indeed the world. During the 1970s, many landless peasants enrolled in a communist party, the Mazdoor Kisan Party (MKP), that energized them to occupy the region’s landed estates (jagirs) and confront colonially-inherited inequalities. The party also inspired peasants to see “theory” as necessary to both their and the world’s liberation, and several peasants subsequently theorized across various local and transnational traditions to further a universal project of mazdur kisan raj worker-peasant rule).

    Theory from the Trenches contributes to wide-ranging conversations – across political anthropology, South Asian studies, and post/decolonial studies – concerning decolonization. Whereas some scholars argue that various anti-imperialist movements, from the Haitian Revolution to Third World socialism, were the true harbingers of universal Enlightenment ideals, while others maintain that they were inspired by non-European indigenous epistemologies, even alternative universalisms, I explore how peasant revolutionaries theorized ideational linkages across traditions to promote a universal mazdur kisan raj. Ultimately, the dissertation recasts peasants as worldly theoretical actors, destabilizing various distinctions – like rural/urban, theory/practice and universal/particular – that have conventionally framed the study of decolonization in the global South.

    SHOZAB RAZA is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Program in Agrarian Studies at Yale University. His research broadly focuses on imperialism, agrarian capitalism, and radical politics in the global South, especially Pakistan. His research has been published in various journals, while his public writing has appeared in venues like The Guardian and Boston Review. He is also a founding editor of Jamhoor, a progressive multimedia platform on South Asia and its diasporas.

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The Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada Endowment on Pakistan, established by Rafat Pirzada and his wife, Amna Jaffer, and named after Rafat Pirzada’s father, Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada, supports i) the Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada Dissertation Prize on Pakistan (an annual dissertation prize for the best work in the humanities, social sciences, law, or public health on Pakistan, the region that is Pakistan, or things to do with Pakistan), and ii) the Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada Lecture on Pakistan (an annual lecture that spotlights the winner of the S.S. Pirzada Dissertation Prize). Rafat Pirzada is a Silicon Valley based entrepreneur and venture capitalist.

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For DIRECTIONS to the Institute please enter “Institute for South Asia Studies” in your google maps or click this GOOGLE MAPS LINK.

PARKING INFORMATION
Please note that parking is not always easily available in Berkeley. Take public transportation if possible or arrive early to secure your spot.

Event is FREE and OPEN to the public.

_________________

If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) or information about campus mobility access features in order to fully participate in this event, please contact Puneeta Kala at pkala@berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days in advance of the event.

https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/229489-zahra-hayat-shozab-raza-the-s-s-pirzada-lectures-on-p
Bertie Kibreah | Debate on the Dais: Shrine Performance and Discursive Devotion in Bangladesh, April 12https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/229485-bertie-kibreah-debate-on-the-dais-shrine-performance-

A lecture by the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Research Fellow for 2023, Bertie Kibreah, Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology, School of Music, University of South Florida.

Brian Bond, Lecturer (Music of India), Department of Music and Brent Eng, PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology will serve as discussants at the event. 

Event moderated by Elora Shehabuddin, Professor of Gender & Women’s Studies and Global Studies; Director, Subir and Malini Chowdhury Center for Bangladesh Studies, UC Berkeley

TALK ABSTRACT: What does it mean for a shrine-based debate to be a devotional performance? Echoing recent works on contemporary Sufisms that highlight the intersectionality of communities, repertoires, and narratives, Bangladesh’s bicr gn (“songs of rumination”) is an extemporized wellspring for articulating concurrent devotional subjectivities. In this performance, a network of interlocutors engage in an aggregative musicality that combines versified, saintly, and polemical elements into a staged discourse on loss, alterity, and sometimes absurdism. Drawing attention to interlocking tropes in ritual theory, migration studies, and the anthropology of media, this discursive devotionalism can be understood as a profoundly generative negotiation of space through converging pilgrimage routes, shrine committees, itinerant programming, stylized listening practices, and a popular folk music revival. Ultimately, bicr gn reifies a performance of devotion that is meandering, contingent, and suppositional, and is also informed by past and present border negotiations, inter-religious pieties, a transglobal citizenry, and Sufi media—within, between, and beyond Bengals.

SPEAKER BIO: Bertie Kibreah is Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of South Florida. He joined the University of South Florida’s Music Faculty in 2022. He is an ethnomusicologist and South Asianist (PhD, University of Chicago), with interests in re-sounding the greater region of Bengal—an enduring focal point in South Asia—to be more inclusive of sonic histories and contemporary music life in Bangladesh, the Bay of Bengal, and the “Banglashere.” Bertie’s research is shaped by discourses of devotion, modernity, and migration—especially through the performative lens of pilgrimage, cultural industries, Sufi feminisms, and borderland musicking. He frequently draw on theories of difference (memory, partition, genocide studies), interconnectivity (Inter-Asian, Indian Ocean, Adivasi, and Asian American studies) as well as orality-aurality (sound studies, affect studies, the anthropology of media).

Bertie’s current book project explores and complicates trajectories of devotion through sonic geographies of the Bengal river delta, the musical placemaking of shrines, and the collectivized impressions of folk festivals within, between, and beyond Bengals (including adjacent Bengali pluralities). A second book project of his is concerned with intergenerational timbres and devotional memory in the larger realm of Bangladeshi global citizenries, as refracted by recent labor reforms in the Arab Gulf, newer migration routes into Europe via the Mediterranean, and the often overlooked “ethnoburbs” of Bangladeshi Americans.

Trained on the tabla, a prominent percussion instrument in South Asia, Bertie also sings in a variety of languages and performs on a number of additional instruments—especially from Bengal—including the dotara lute. The breath of his musical explorations—across linguistic and sonic borders—is fueled by the civic awareness of public humanities work and the artistic interactions of practitioners and communities.

Bertie is the recipient of a number of awards, most recently a research grant from USF College of the Arts, as well as the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Research Award administered through the Malini Chowdhury Center for Bangladesh Studies at UC Berkeley. Bertie is also incoming vice president for the Southeast/Caribbean chapter of the Society for Ethnomusicology.

 

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The Bangabandhu Research Award allows us to bring one or two graduate students or early career faculty members each year from accredited institutions in the United States and in Europe to share their research on Bangabandhu and/or Bangladesh with the UC Berkeley community. This award has been established with the generous support of the US Bangabandhu Parishad, California.

Established in 2013 with a generous gift from the Subir & Malini Chowdhury Foundation, The Subir & Malini Chowdhury Center for Bangladesh Studies at UC Berkeley champions the study of Bangladesh’s cultures, peoples and history. The first of its kind in the US, the Center’s mission is to create an innovative model combining research, scholarships, the promotion of art and culture, and the building of ties between institutions in Bangladesh and the University of California.

Like us on FACEBOOK

For DIRECTIONS to the Institute please enter “Institute for South Asia Studies” in your google maps or click this GOOGLE MAPS LINK.

PARKING INFORMATION
Please note that parking is not always easily available in Berkeley. Take public transportation if possible or arrive early to secure your spot.

Event is FREE and OPEN to the public.

_____________

If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) or information about campus mobility access features in order to fully participate in this event, please contact Puneeta Kala at pkala@berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days in advance of the event.

https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/229485-bertie-kibreah-debate-on-the-dais-shrine-performance-
[On Zoom] Lectures by Saarthak Singh and Janhavi Khemka, the recipients of the UC Berkeley South Asia Art Initiative Awards for 2024, April 17https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/212432-on-zoom-lectures-by-saarthak-singh-and-janhavi-khemka

Talks by Saarthak Singh and Janhavi Khemka, the recipients of the UC Berkeley South Asia Artist Award and the UC Berkeley South Asia Art and Architecture Dissertation Award for 2024

The South Asia Art Initiative at the University of California, Berkeley promotes research-based conversations and collaborations around the arts of South Asia + its diasporas from the ancient period to the now. To read more about the Initiative and help support its various fundraising goals, please click HERE
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The event is FREE and OPEN to the public.

https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/212432-on-zoom-lectures-by-saarthak-singh-and-janhavi-khemka
Devika Singh | A transnational history of art in India, April 18https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/229482-devika-singh-a-transnational-history-of-art-in-india

A talk by Devika Singh, Senior Lecturer in Curating at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London based on her new book, International Departures: Art in India after Independence, a captivating and richly illustrated history of art in India since 1947.

Event moderated by Al-An deSouza, Professor of Photography in the Department of Practice at UC Berkeley. 

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This event will be live streamed on SAAI’s FB page - SAAIatUCBerkeley.

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ABOUT THE BOOK: In this captivating and richly illustrated account, Devika Singh presents together for the first time the work of Indian and foreign artists active in India after independence in 1947. The book engages with the many creators, critics and patrons of the post-war Indian art world, from K.G. Subramanyan, Zarina and Mulk Raj Anand to Isamu Noguchi, Le Corbusier and Clement Greenberg.

Singh opens up new ways of thinking about Indian art, closely examining artworks and analysing how they were received in India and abroad. Featuring a wealth of rare and previously unpublished images, this provocative new book explores how artists in India participated in global modernism during a crucial period of decolonization and nation building.

SPEAKER BIO: Devika Singh is Senior Lecturer in Curating at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. She was previously Curator, International Art at Tate Modern where she was in charge of South Asian art and part of the Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational. She co-curated ‘Gedney in India’ (CSMVS, Mumbai, 2017; Duke University, 2018) and has curated exhibitions ranging from ‘Planetary Planning’ (Dhaka Art Summit, 2018) to ‘Homelands: Art from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan’ (Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, 2019-20), as well as a number of displays at Tate Modern including Lee Mingwei’s Our Labyrinth (Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, 2022). Her writing has appeared widely in exhibition catalogues, art reviews such as frieze, Art Press and MARG and in the journals Art History, Modern Asian Studies, the Journal of Art Historiography and Third Text. Her book International Departures: Art in India after Independence (Reaktion Books) will be released in early 2024 in the United States.

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The South Asia Art Initiative at the University of California, Berkeley promotes research-based conversations and collaborations around the arts of South Asia + its diasporas from the ancient period to the now. To read more about the Initiative and help support its various fundraising goals, please click HERE.
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Event made possible with the support of the Sarah Kailath Chair of India Studies

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For DIRECTIONS to the Institute please enter “Institute for South Asia Studies” in your google maps or click this GOOGLE MAPS LINK.

PARKING INFORMATION
Please note that parking is not always easily available in Berkeley. Take public transportation if possible or arrive early to secure your spot.

Event is FREE and OPEN to the public.

https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/229482-devika-singh-a-transnational-history-of-art-in-india
A Guftugu with distinguished scholar and historian at Oxford University, Faisal Devji, April 19https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/229929-a-guftugu-with-distinguished-scholar-and-historian-at

A conversation with Professor of South Asian History and Fellow of St Antony’s College at the University of Oxford, Faisal Devji.

Prof. Devji will be in conversation with Associate Professor of History, Janaki Bakhle and Associate Professor of English and co-Director of the Program in Critical Theory, Poulomi Saha. The event will be moderated by Munis D. Faruqui, Director, Institute for South Asia Studies; Sarah Kailath Chair of India Studies; Associate Professor, South & South East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley. 
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About the Speaker
Dr. Faisal Devji is Reader in Modern Indian History and Fellow of St. Antony’s College at the University of Oxford. He has held faculty positions at Harvard, Yale, the University of Chicago and the New School for Social Research, as well as the Yves Oltramane Chair at the Graduate Institute in Geneva. Devji has been a fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna and the Institute of Public Knowledge at New York University. He is the author of four books, Landscapes of the Jihad: Militancy, Morality, Modernity (2005), The Terrorist in Search of Humanity: Militant Islam and Global Politics (2008), The Impossible Indian: Gandhi and the Temptation of Violence (2012) and Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a Political Idea (2013).

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For DIRECTIONS to the Institute please enter “Institute for South Asia Studies” in your google maps or click this GOOGLE MAPS LINK.

PARKING INFORMATION
Please note that parking is not always easily available in Berkeley. Take public transportation if possible or arrive early to secure your spot.

Event is FREE and OPEN to the public.

_____________

If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) or information about campus mobility access features in order to fully participate in this event, please contact Puneeta Kala at pkala@berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days in advance of the event.

https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/229929-a-guftugu-with-distinguished-scholar-and-historian-at
Faisal Devji | A Prophet Disarmed (The Mahomedali Habib Distinguished Lecture on Pakistan), April 20https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/229927-faisal-devji-a-prophet-disarmed-the-mahomedali-habib-

The Institute and Pakistan@Berkeley, a campaign to broaden and deepen Pakistan related research, teaching and programming at UC Berkeley, are proud to announce the eleventh “Mahomedali Habib Distinguished Lecture on Pakistan” by Professor of South Asian History and Fellow of St Antony’s College at the University of Oxford, Faisal Devji.

TALK ABSTRACT: Controversies about insults to the Prophet began in India during the middle of the nineteenth century to become global at the end of the Cold War. Such controversies emerge from the stripping away of (Prophet) Muhammad’s religious as much as political character such that he becomes vulnerable to insult as an ordinary person. The passions aroused among Muslims by insults to a Prophet so much like themselves take the place of his vanishing religio-political role. They represent the impossible effort to recover a theological language and experience for modern Islam. 

SPEAKER BIO:  Dr. Faisal Devji is Reader in Modern Indian History and Fellow of St. Antony’s College at the University of Oxford. He has held faculty positions at Harvard, Yale, the University of Chicago and the New School for Social Research, as well as the Yves Oltramane Chair at the Graduate Institute in Geneva. Devji has been a fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna and the Institute of Public Knowledge at New York University. He is the author of four books, Landscapes of the Jihad: Militancy, Morality, Modernity (2005), The Terrorist in Search of Humanity: Militant Islam and Global Politics (2008), The Impossible Indian: Gandhi and the Temptation of Violence (2012) and Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a Political Idea (2013).

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The Mahomedali Habib Distinguished Lecture on Pakistan is named in honor of one of the leading figures in the history of the Habib family. Through this lecture series the Habib family aims to improve and diversify conversations about Pakistan in the United States as well as create opportunities for US and Pakistan-based scholars to dialogue. More about the Habib Distinguished Lecture series HERE

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For DIRECTIONS to the Institute please enter “Institute for South Asia Studies” in your google maps or click this GOOGLE MAPS LINK.

PARKING INFORMATION
Please note that parking is not always easily available in Berkeley. Take public transportation if possible or arrive early to secure your spot.

Event is FREE and OPEN to the public.

_____________

If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) or information about campus mobility access features in order to fully participate in this event, please contact Puneeta Kala at pkala@berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days in advance of the event.

https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/229927-faisal-devji-a-prophet-disarmed-the-mahomedali-habib-
Radha Kumar | The Republic Relearned, April 23https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/229922-radha-kumar-the-republic-relearned

A book talk by Radha Kumar, former director-general of the Delhi Policy Group and a specialist on peace and security in South Asia, on her forthcoming publication titled, The Republic Relearned (forthcoming, Penguin Random House India, March 2024), that briefly analyses Modi’s India, asking whether it can be called a second republic that reflects totalitarian conditions as defined by Hannah Arendt. It focuses on India’s past experiences of democracy renewal and asks what lessons can be learned to anchor Indian democracy more firmly when the opportunity arises.

The event will be moderated by Janaki Bakhle, Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley

About the Book: 

This book is written in a time of increasing debate on the rise of autocracy, including in India, as a spate of books on the Modi administration detail. While this book briefly analyses Modi’s India, asking whether it can be called a second republic that reflects totalitarian conditions as defined by Hannah Arendt, it focuses on India’s past experiences of democracy renewal and asks what lessons can be learned to anchor Indian democracy more firmly when the opportunity arises.

It is generally assumed that Indian democracy has had an unbroken run since independence, with the brief disruption of the 1975 to 1977 emergency. This book argues that, on the contrary, India has suffered longer periods of deterioration in its democratic markers than in their development. The country underwent three relatively short-lived waves of democracy renewal after the founding years of the republic (between 1967 and 2014), as compared to almost four decades of democracy decay.

That fact, Kumar argues, should make an examination of the three waves of democracy renewal even more significant. The flaws in Indian democracy that made the past nine years of autocracy possible suggest that the clock cannot be turned back. Rather, a new wave of democracy renewal – which Kumar calls a third republic – will have to focus on anchoring democratic institutions in such a way that they cannot easily be suborned. What are the lessons from past experience?

Examining the three waves of democracy renewal, Kumar finds that the most valuable lessons lie in policy actions as well as proposals that were left unimplemented. These, which ranged from electoral reform to human development, social justice and institutional as well as federal autonomy, could form the bedrock for a third republic, albeit partly.

A greater problem is one presaged at independence itself, of instilling a democratic culture in a deeply unequal society. India has long been an outlier for democracy theorists for this reason, leading theorists such as Kaviraj to explore particular democracy formation in a post-colonial primarily agrarian society. Does the current period resemble the Emergency period, when civil and political society (to use Chatterjee’s term) intersected with political parties to bring in a democratic administration? Is the current period one of reckoning, in which economic growth has unleashed demands for equality of opportunity rather than low level doles (which are nevertheless necessary given the levels of poverty)? How will a fourth wave of democracy renewal tackle the formidable challenges of entrenched institutional bias in the administration and police? Here again, the past three waves of democracy renewal offer pointers.

India’s democratic future, Kumar concludes, depends on the extent to which a revived political opposition and civil and political society can draw on the lessons of the three waves of democracy renewal. She is hopeful.

Speaker BioRadha Kumar is former director-general of the Delhi Policy Group and a specialist on peace and security in South Asia. Earlier director of the Mandela Centre for Peace at Jamia Millia Islamia University (2005-2010), Dr. Kumar was senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York (1999-2003), associate fellow at the Institute for War and Peace Studies at Columbia University (1996-8) and executive director of the Helsinki Citizen’s Assembly in Prague (1992-4). She chaired the United Nations University Council and is vice-chair of the SIPRI Board. She was one of the group of interlocutors for Jammu and Kashmir appointed by the Government of India (2010-11).

Dr. Kumar’s forthcoming book, The Republic Relearned: A Brief History of Democracy in India, will be published by Penguin Random House in 2024. Her previous books include Paradise at War: A Political History of Kashmir (Aleph: 2018), A Gender Atlas of India (with Karthika Sudhir and Marcel Korff, Sage: 2018), (ed.) Negotiating Peace in Deeply Divided Societies: A Set of Simulations (Sage: 2009), Making Peace with Partition (Penguin: 2005), Divide and Fall? Bosnia in the Annals of Partition (Verso: 1997), and A History of Doing: Movements for Women’s Rights and Feminism in India, 1900-1990 (Kali for Women and Verso: 1993). Her articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, the EU Institute for Security Studies, the Centre for European Policy Studies, the World PolicyJournal, theBrown Journal of World Affairs,the Indian Economic and Social History Review and the Economic and Political Weekly. She is a frequent OpEd contributor to the Indian Express and The Hindu.

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Event made possible with the support of the Sarah Kailath Chair of India Studies

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For DIRECTIONS to the Institute please enter “Institute for South Asia Studies” in your google maps or click this GOOGLE MAPS LINK.

PARKING INFORMATION
Please note that parking is not always easily available in Berkeley. Take public transportation if possible or arrive early to secure your spot.

Event is FREE and OPEN to the public.

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If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) or information about campus mobility access features in order to fully participate in this event, please contact Puneeta Kala at pkala@berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days in advance of the event.

https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/229922-radha-kumar-the-republic-relearned
A talk by Prof. Shailaja Paik, author of Dalit Women’s Education in Modern India: Double Discrimination., April 24https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/114926-a-talk-by-prof-shailaja-paik-author-of-dalit-womens-e

A talk by Shailaja Paik, Charles P. Taft Distinguished Professor of History and Affiliate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Asian Studies, University of Cincinnati and the author of Dalit Women’s Education in Modern India: Double Discrimination.
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DATE: Wed, April 24, 2024
TIME: 5 - 6:30 pm Berkeley | Calculate Your Local Time
VENUE: 10 Stephens Hall
LIVESTREAM: On FB at ISASatUCBerkeley
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Speaker Bio
Shailaja Paik is Charles P. Taft Distinguished Professor of History and Affiliate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Asian Studies, University of Cincinnati  and the author of Dalit Women’s Education in Modern India: Double Discrimination (London and New York: Routledge, 2014). Paik’s current research is funded by the American Council of Learned Societies Frederick Burkhardt Fellowship, Stanford Humanities Center, and the National Endowment for the Humanities-American Institute of Indian Studies Senior Fellowship. She will be a fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center next year.

Her first book, Dalit Women’s Education in Modern India: Double Discrimination (Routledge, 2014 ), examines the nexus between caste, class, gender, and state pedagogical practices among Dalit (“Untouchable”) women in urban India. Paik’s current research is funded by the American Council of Learned Societies Frederick Burkhardt Fellowship and the National Endowment for the Humanities-American Institute of Indian Studies Senior Fellowship.

Her second book, The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanityin Modern India (Stanford University Press, 2022), analyzes the politics of caste, class, gender, sexuality, and popular culture in modern Maharashtra. The book won the American Historical Association’s John F. Richards award for “the most distinguished work of scholarship on South Asia”.

Paik is working on several new book projects: Becoming “Vulgar”: Caste Domination and Normative Sexuality in Modern India, Caste and Race in South Asia, and the Cambridge Companion to Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. She has published several articles on a variety of themes, including the politics of naming, Dalit and African American women, Dalit women’s education, and new Dalit womanhood in colonial India, in prestigious international journals. Her research has been funded by Yale University, Emory University, the Ford Foundation, Warwick University, Charles Wallace India Trust, and the Indian Council of Social Sciences and Research, among others. Her scholarship and research interests are concerned with contributing to and furthering the dialogue in human rights, anti-colonial struggles, transnational women’s history, women-of-color feminisms, and particularly on gendering caste, and subaltern history. Paik recently co-organized the “Fifth International Conference on the Unfinished Legacy of Dr. Ambedkar” at the New School, October 2019.
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For DIRECTIONS to the Institute please enter “Institute for South Asia Studies” in your google maps or click this GOOGLE MAPS LINK.

PARKING INFORMATION
Please note that parking is not always easily available in Berkeley. Take public transportation if possible or arrive early to secure your spot.

_____________

If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) or information about campus mobility access features in order to fully participate in this event, please contact Puneeta Kala at pkala@berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days in advance of the event.

https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/114926-a-talk-by-prof-shailaja-paik-author-of-dalit-womens-e
Pradip Krishen, the Indo-American Community Lecturer at UC Berkeley for 2024, April 25https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/229923-pradip-krishen-the-indo-american-community-lecturer-a

We are privileged to have the acclaimed ecological gardener and environmentalist,Pradip Krishen, in residence as the Indo-American Community Lecturer in India Studies at the Institute for South Asia Studies in April 2024.

Mr. Krishen writes about trees and plants, and works as an ecological gardener (mostly) in Western India and the desert where he has rewilded spoiled landscapes with native vegetation. He is the author-photographer of Trees of Delhi: A Field Guide, which received popular and critical acclaim, and became a bestseller in India, and Jungle Trees of Central India. He has also directed some well-known films like Massey Sahib and In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones.

As Indo-American Community Lecturer Mr. Krishen will stay on campus as a scholar-in-residence during the last week of April 2024 and deliver one public lecture on Thu, April 25 (title TBD) and engage with our campus community.
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About the Speaker

Born in New Delhi in 1949, Pradip Krishen was educated at Mayo College and St. Stephen’s College, and at Balliol College, Oxford. His first job was teaching history at Ramjas College at Delhi University. He joined a small, private firm making science documentaries for TV in 1975 and went on to direct three feature films: Massey Sahib in 1985, In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones in 1989 and Electric Moon in 1991. His films have won significant Indian and international awards. He gave up filmmaking in 1993 and started to teach himself field botany. Krishen began by spending time in the subtropical jungles of Pachmarhi in the Satpura Hills of Madhya Pradesh. He started to identify and photograph Delhi’s trees in 1998, extensively exploring the city and its semi-wild fringes. In the course of his work, Krishen led numerous public tree-walks on Sunday mornings and became a keen ecological gardener. Krishen has created “native-plant” gardens in Delhi and western Rajasthan and has completed a significant rewilding scheme in a habitat of volcanic rock at Rao Jodha Desert Rock Park, next to Mehrangarh fort in Jodhpur, Rajasthan. In 2014, Krishen began work on a new gardening initiative at Abha Mahal in Nagaur Fort, Rajasthan. The following year, he took over as Project Director of the gardens of the Calico Museum in Ahmedabad, and most recently, led a team of horticulturists and landscape architects to restore an extensive set of sand dunes in Jaipur city, Rajasthan. This opened in 2021 as a public park called “Kishan Bagh” (nothing to do with his surname!). A few other projects that he is working on at this moment are creating a wildflower meadow for Scindia School in Gwalior and restoring the natural ecology of a clayey riverbank on the Chambal river in Rajasthan.

Krishen’s book Trees of Delhi: A Field Guide, published by Dorling Kindersley/Penguin Group in 2006, met with popular and critical acclaim and became a best-seller in India. His second book Jungle Trees of Central India, published by Penguin India was released in 2014. His most recent publication is Abha Mahal Bagh: A Garden of Wild Plants from the Thar Desert came out in 2019). 

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About the Lecture Series
The Indo-American Community Lectureship in India Studies is a part of UC Berkeley’s Indo-American Community Chair in India Studies, a chair endowed in 1990-91 with the support of the CG of India in San Francisco, the Hon. Satinder K. Lambah and hundreds of members of the Indo-American community. This lectureship enables ISAS, with the support of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), to bring prominent individuals from India to Berkeley to deliver a lecture and interact with campus and community members during a two-week stay. Past Lectureship holders include Upendra Baxi, Andre Beteille, Madhav Gadgil, Ramachandra Guha, Meenakshi Mukherjee, Narendra Panjwani, Anuradha Kapur, Ashis Nandy, Amita Baviskar, Romila Thapar, Nivedita Menon, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Nandini Sundar, and Tanika Sarkar. Read more about the series or listen to past lectures HERE

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For DIRECTIONS to the Institute please enter “Institute for South Asia Studies” in your google maps or click this GOOGLE MAPS LINK.

PARKING INFORMATION
Please note that parking is not always easily available in Berkeley. Take public transportation if possible or arrive early to secure your spot.

Event is FREE and OPEN to the public.

_____________

If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) or information about campus mobility access features in order to fully participate in this event, please contact Puneeta Kala at pkala@berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days in advance of the event.

https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/229923-pradip-krishen-the-indo-american-community-lecturer-a
[On Zoom] Ranjan Ghosh | Tagore in the Age of Anthropocene: Plastic Nature (The Tagore Visiting Scholar Lecture for 2024), April 26https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/237376-on-zoom-ranjan-ghosh-tagore-in-the-age-of-anthropocen

The Tagore Program on Literature, Culture and Philosophy at UC Berkeley invites you for the 3rd Tagore Visiting Scholar Lecture by literary and cultural theorist and the Tagore Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley for Spring 2024, Ranjan Ghosh.

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DATE: Friday, April 26, 2024
TIME: 9 am Berkeley | 9:30 pm Kolkata (+1 day) | Calculate Your Local Time

REGISTER ONLINE

This event will also be live streamed on the Institute’s FB page: ISASatUCBerkeley
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SPEAKER BIO

Dr. Ghosh is an Indian academic and thinker who teaches at the Department of English, University of North Bengal, India. His wide-ranging scholarly work spans across the fields of comparative literature, comparative philosophy, philosophy of education, environmental humanities, critical and cultural theory, and Intellectual history.  His many books include Thinking Literature across Continents (Duke University Press, 2016, with J Hillis Miller), Philosophy and Poetry: Continental Perspectives ed. (Columbia University Press, 2019), Plastic Tagore (Oxford University Press, forthcoming) and the trilogy that he is completing to establish the discipline of plastic humanities: The Plastic Turn (Cornell University Press, 2022), Plastic Figures (Cornell University Press, 2024, forthcoming) and Plastic Literature (forthcoming).

He has been an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow.

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Launched in Fall 2019, and housed in the Institute for South Asia Studies, the Tagore Program on Literature, Culture and Philosophy at UC Berkeley, is the first of its kind in the US. Designed to showcase the life and legacy of Rabindranath Tagore, the program sponsors talks and workshops on Tagore, as well as semester-long visiting professorships in Tagore Studies at UC Berkeley. Read more about the program HERE.
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The event is FREE and OPEN to the public.

https://events.berkeley.edu/csas/event/237376-on-zoom-ranjan-ghosh-tagore-in-the-age-of-anthropocen