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CISAR Newsletter: October 1, 2019
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Preceded by Chai and Snacks
Date: October 3, 2019
Time: 5
:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Location: C.K. Choi 120
Presenter: David Geary
Co-sponsored by: Interdisciplinary Histories Research Cluster, the Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Program in Buddhism and Contemporary Society, and the Department of Asian Studies.
The state of Bihar (the "land of vihara") is frequently lauded by Indian political leaders and
Buddhist teachers as the "land of origins" and/or homeland of Buddhism that has given rise to a
pan-Asian, if not, global religious movement. Outside of the obvious economic benefits
generated by Buddhist pilgrimage and religious tourism in Bodh Gaya, there remains a deep
disconnect and cultural divide among efforts to rebuild an Indian Buddhist sangha, and the
sacred power inscribed on the landscape by extra-national Buddhist communities and diasporic
groups, like the Tibetans. Drawing on ethnographic research this paper will examine how some
of the Dalit villages located a short distance from the Mahabodhi Temple encapsulate the diverse
expressions, meanings and contradictions of Indian Buddhism in the early twenty-first century.
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Date: October 4, 2019
Time: 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Location: C.K. Choi 120
Presenter: Sanjay Ruparelia
Co-sponsored by: The Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions, and CISAR.
What explains the growth of rights-based activism, particularly through appeals to the courts, law, and constitutionalism, in India and China? How are these various rights justified, conceptualized, and pursued by state actors and social forces in terms of their moral imaginaries, political strategies, and social repertoires? Why have many prominent rights-based struggles in India and China simultaneously demanded greater transparency, responsiveness, and accountability from the state? What are their successes and failures to date? Finally, does the trajectory of these developments underscore the importance of regime-level differences or their declining significance? This presentation addresses these questions by examining the politics of rights-based legal activism from the era of Indira Gandhi and Deng Xiaoping to Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping.
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Date:
October 6, 2019
Time: 3:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Location: AERL Room 120
Presenter: Anand Patwardhan
Co-sponsored by: Interdisciplinary Histories Research Cluster, The School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, UBC Graduate School of Journalism, South Asian Film Education Society (SAFES), W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics, the Department of Theatre and Film, and CISAR.
Concerned about what is happening in India today? Want to learn more? Join CISAR and multiple partners to watch "Reason: the war between faith and rationality" an 8-part, award-winning documentary by Anand Patwardhan, who will be available for Q&A after the screening. Light refreshments will be served.
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Join us at 5:30 for refreshments before the event at 6 p.m.
Time: 5
:30 PM - 8:00 PM
Location: C.K. Choi 120
Presenter: Suraj Yengde
Suraj Yengde is an award-winning scholar and activist from India, and the author of Caste Matters. He is an inaugural postdoctoral fellow at the Initiative for Institutional Anti-racism and Accountability, Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. He has published in the field of caste, race, ethnicity studies, and inter-regional labor migration in the global south.
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Time: 5
:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Location: C.K. Choi 120
Presenter: David Geary
Co-sponsored by: Interdisciplinary Histories Research Cluster, the Department of Asian Studies, the Early Modern Research Cluster, and CISAR.
India was the scene for the production of a vast, internally diverse chronicle literature in Persian during the period 1500-1900 CE. During the nineteenth century, European scholars (such as the famous Elliot and Dowson) made selective use of this material to create the modern understanding of South Asian history that remains dominant to the present. I will discuss concepts pertaining to time that undergird a variety of understandings of the past in the original literature, highlighting matters left out by nineteenth-century interpreters and their later followers invested in nationalist histories. The exploration is part of a larger project aimed at questioning the framework for 'Islamic' history in modern scholarship.
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Due Date: October 18, 2019 at 4:00 PM
The Centre for India and South Asia Research (CISAR) at The University of British Columbia invites submissions for the 2019 Nehru Humanitarian Graduate Scholarship in Indian Studies. The annual $1,000 scholarship is offered by Dr. and Mrs. D. P. Goel to a graduate student pursuing the political, historical, economic, religious, social, or cultural study of India. The award is made on the recommendation of the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies, in accordance with findings of the Adjudication Committee of the Centre for India and South Asia Research.
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CISAR Graduate Student Travel Grant 2019-20
Due Date: November 15, 2019
The Centre for India and South Asia Research offers 2 conference/workshop travel grants per year at up to $500 each for current graduate students at UBC to support travel to present papers on topics related to any part of South Asia or the South Asian Diaspora. Applications due November 15, 2019.
Recipients of the travel grant will be invited to speak in the annual seminar series at CISAR.
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Join the Canadian South Asian Studies Association (CSASA)
South Asianists from across Canada gathered last June at UBC, and decided together to establish a national scholarly association for faculty actively researching and teaching on South Asia-Canada and graduate students enrolled in related Canadian M.A. and Ph.D. programmes, to be known as the Canadian South Asian Studies Association (CSASA) as a non-profit member affiliated with the
Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Ideally, we hope to have some kind of CSASA presence at the next
Congress (2020), at Western University.
As a first step, all graduate students, faculty members, and researchers with research interests in South Asia are invited to join CSASA-L, a newly created listserv hosted at Athabasca University, where subscribers can share professionally relevant information related to teaching, research, resources, and events on South Asia-Canada. If you would like to join, please read the
listserv rules and enter your
subscription details.
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Our 2018-2019 Annual Report is ready! Take a look at last year's events and activities, with special new highlights on South Asia-related programs across UBC -- and learn more about CISAR's work.
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We've compiled a list of courses for Winter 2019/2020 with South Asia content. You can checkout the list
here.
If you're a UBC faculty member teaching a course with content pertaining to South Asia, feel free to contact us to list it on the CISAR website.
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