Autumn 2005
October 15, 2005
Sitar concert featuring Sanjoy Bandopadhyay
November 2, 2005
Herbert
Screening and discussion with filmmaker Suman Mukherjee
Herbert Sarkar is a forty year old crank who thinks he can talk to the dead. Surviving on the charity of relatives, Herbert grows up in North Kolkata as the butt of local jokes. This changes when he receives a message in a dream which, to the suprise of his local town, proves to be correct. This is where the film begins, with flashbacks into hidden corners of Herbert's quixotic life, from being an alienated orphan with a tragi-comic love affair to his involvement with the underground Maoist movement during the seventies. The film depicts, with a rare blend of empathy and irony, the efforts of a "gifted" man's constant struggle to adapt to his changing surroundings and to gain love, friendship, and community. Based on Nabarun Bhattacharya's novel of the same name, which won the highest literary prize in India in 1997, Suman Mukhopadhyay's debut feature Herbert is a deeply moving and artistically accomplished motion picture full of profound laguther, pathos, and humanity.
November 11-13, 2005
India: Implementing Pluralism and Democracy
Co-sponsored by the Marty Martin Center, University of Chicago Divinity School, and the Center for Comparative Constitutionalism, University of Chicago Law School
Keynote address: Amartya Sen, Harvard University -- "India: Large and Small" (download audio)
Download papers by Akeel Bilgrami, Zoya Hasan, Martha Nussbaum, and Prabhat Patnaik
November 14, 2005
A Conversation with Javed Akhtar
Javed Akhtar, the famous Urdu poet, lyricist, screenplay writer, and activist spoke with a small group of students and faculty at the University of Chicago. Mr. Akhtar spoke on the musicality of Urdu Poetry and offered advice to creative writers. His talk was followed by a question and answer session and recitations of his poetry.
November 18, 2005
Banaras Soul Music 2005 tour
Concert featuring Rabindra Goswami (sitar) and Ramchandra Pandit (tabla)
Winter 2006
January 23, 2006
Continuous Journey
Screening and discussion with filmmaker Ali Kazimi
In 1914, the Komagata Maru, a Japanese ship chartered by Sikh businessman Gurdit Singh, reached Canada but was promptly denied entry into port due to the questionable nature of the ship's contents: 376 passengers of Indian descent, veterans of the British India Army seeking to settle on land they fought for. Trapping the passengers on board with no provisions just yards from shore, Canadian authorities scrambled for two months to uphold the exclusionary wording of a policy called the Continuous Journey Regulation, and began to surround the boat with troops. This little known incident in British Canadian colonial history culminates with a stand-off in Vancouver Harbor, multiple assassinations, and the ship's return to India only to be attacked by British authorities. Director Ali Kazimi combines newly discovered archival footage with modern musings on the nature of citizenship and belonging, while questioning the lengths that imperial governments will go to in the name of national security.
The film was introduced by Susan Gzesh, Director of the Human Rights Program, and Q&A facilitated by Mona Mehta, Ph.D candidate in the Department of Political Science
February 24-25, 2006
3rd South Asia Graduate Student Conference
Imagining Empire: Visions of a Unified Polity in South Asia from Antiquity to the Present
From the ancient concept of samrajya to the Mughal notion of a Delhi-based Caliphate to the British Raj, South Asia has been the crucible for perhaps the world's most varied set of imperial formations. The goal of this conference is to initiate a dialogue across disciplines, historical periods, and language specializations, in order to extend our understanding of the South Asian imperial imagination.
Spring 2006
April 21-22, 2006
Sacred Cows and False Prophets: Traversing History and Religion in South Asia
A conference in honor of Ronald B. Inden
In celebration of the Spring 2005 retirement of Ronald B. Inden, Professor Emeritus of History and South Asian Languages & Civilizations, University of Chicago
Keynote address: Vinay Lal, UCLA -- "Intolerance for 'Hindu Tolerance': Hinduism, Religious Violence in Pre-Modern India, and the Contours of Public Discourse"
Sacred Cows and False Prophets website
This conference to honor the scholarship and mentorship of Ronald B. Inden revolves around some of his central concerns and themes in history and religion of India: imperial formations and agency in Indian history, production and consumption of texts in their environments, historical constructions and representations in Orientalist and post-Orientalist scholarship, historiography and the ideas of history. Our primary focus is on critical transformations in South Asian religious traditions, a topic we believe to be of contemporary relevance given the increasingly complex and contested intersections between religion and polity in the world today. All the papers of this conference will seek to conceive of these transformations in ways occluded by the recent post-Orientalist emphasis on the colonial encounter and the 'invention' of tradition. By concentrating on empirical studies of pre-modern and modern processes, our objective is to follow the precedent of Professor Inden's own appeals for scholarship that represents the agency of real historical agents in shaping and intervening in the worlds which we study, as well as to provide a challenge to reification of religious traditions within modern South Asia.
May 7, 2006
Along the Gypsy Trail
Co-sponsored by International House's Global Voices series, the Kalapriya Foundation, the Illinois Arts Council, and the University of Chicago Arts Council
The Caravan is coming! Coinciding with Asian History Month, this three-day multi-cultural dance festival features traditional dances from India, Eastern Europe, Spain, Africa and the Middle East. The program will also include a culinary journey along the gypsy trail curated ABC News food critic Steve Dolinsky.
South Asia Seminar series, 2005-06:
- Kunal Chakrabarty, Jawaharlal Nehru University
- Indrani Chatterjee, Rutgers University
- Kumkum Chatterjee, Pennsylvania State University
- Purna Chowdhury, Heritage College
- Richard Davis, Bard College
- Jorge Flores, Brown University
- Phyllis Granoff, Yale University
- Brian Hatcher, Illinois Wesleyan University
- Stephanie Jameson, UCLA
- Rachel McDermott, Barnard University
- Gail Minault, University of Texas
- Sumathi Ramaswamy, University of Michigan
- Richard Saloman, Washington University
- Rupert Snell, University of Texas
- Cynthia Talbot, University of Texas
Other Co-Sponsored Lectures and Events
With the Chicago Council on Global Affairs:
- John Hamre, Centre for Strategic and International Studies, June 13, 2006 -- "China and India: The Asian Security Question"
- Brent Scowcroft, The Scowcroft Group, June 28, 2006 -- "China and India Rising: Implications for the Global Order and U.S. Leadership"