Category: Events

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Colonizing Kashmir By Hafsa Kanjwal

Thursday, May 16| 12:15 PM – 1:30 PM ET | Zoom

Register to attend: https://forms.gle/DCJogSms831mg1es6

You are formally invited to a Zoom book event featuring author Hafsa Kanjwal. In her new book, Kanjwal investigates the intricate processes through which Kashmir was made “integral” to India during the decade-long rule (1953-1963) of Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad. This exploration delves into bureaucratic documents, propaganda materials, memoirs, literary sources, and oral interviews to analyze the intentions, tensions, and unintended consequences of Bakshi’s state-building policies in the context of India’s colonial occupation.

Join us for a valuable webinar covering a book which addresses the emotional integration, development,  normalization, and empowerment processes that shaped the new hierarchies of power and domination in the aftermath of decolonization. The conversation will critically examine triumphalist narratives of India’s state-formation and challenge the sovereignty claims of the modern nation-state. Kanjwal’s extensive research, drawing on diverse linguistic sources and oral interviews, provides a nuanced understanding of the complex dynamics of Kashmir’s integration into India. 

🎙️ Event Details:
📆 Date: May 16th, 2023
⏰ Time: 12:15 PM-1:30 PM
📍 Virtual Webinar
💻 Register Here: https://forms.gle/DCJogSms831mg1es6

🎙️Speaker

Hafsa Kanjwal, Assistant Professor, Lafayette College

🎙️Commentators

Vazira Zamindar, Associate Professor, Brown University

Mona Bhan, Professor, Syracuse University 

🎙️Moderator

Douglas Haynes, Professor, Dartmouth College

Don’t miss this unique opportunity to register today and join us for a captivating discussion with Hafsa Kanjwal. 🌐📖🔍

Watch the zoom webinar recording here

Sponsored by the Department of Asian Societies, Cultures and Languages (ASCL) and the Bodas Family Endowment for South Asian Studies at Dartmouth College. 

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Life Beyond Waste by Waqas Butt

Tuesday, April 30| 12:15 PM – 1:30 PM ET | Zoom

Register to attend: https://forms.gle/NmftJxNJAvPbctBh9

You are formally invited to an engaging Zoom book event featuring author Waqas Butt. In his new book, Butt explores the profound transformations in Lahore through the lens of waste materials and the lives of those who toil with them. Join us for a captivating webinar in which the author discusses the central role of waste work in organizing and transforming the city, examining historical moments from the colonial period to the present.

Butt’s historical and ethnographic account, informed by conversations about changing configurations of work and labor under capitalism, utilizes a theoretical framework of reproduction to trace how life in Lahore, organized around caste-based relations, has become embedded in infrastructures across Pakistan. The discussion will center around the critical assessment of processes reproducing life in the city along the lines of caste, class, and religion, constitutive features of urbanization across South Asia.

🎙️ Event Details:
📆 Date: April 30th, 2023
⏰ Time: 12:15 PM-1:30 PM
📍 Virtual Webinar
💻 Register Here: https://forms.gle/NmftJxNJAvPbctBh9

🎙️Speaker

Waqas Butt, Assistant Professor, University of Toronto

🎙️Commentators

Joel Lee, Assistant Professor, Williams College

Nikhil Anand, Associate Professor, University of Pennsylvania 

🎙️Moderator

Curt Gambetta, Post-doctoral Fellow, Dartmouth College

Don’t miss this unique opportunity to register today and join us for a captivating discussion with Waqas Butt. 🌐📖🔍

Watch the zoom webinar recording here

Sponsored by the Department of Asian Societies, Cultures and Languages (ASCL) and the Bodas Family Endowment for South Asian Studies at Dartmouth College. 

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Listening with A Feminist Ear by Pavitra Sundar

Thursday, April 04| 12:15 PM – 1:30 PM ET | Zoom

Register to attend: https://forms.gle/3Cs5fW6pEbbjgpXD7

Join us for the seventh Conversations on South Asia event, where we will delve into the transformative power of sound in cinema through Pavitra Sundar’s “Listening with a Feminist Ear.” This groundbreaking book challenges the dominant visual-centric approach to film studies, advocating for a radical shift towards listening as a critical method of analysis. By examining mainstream Bombay cinema, the author brings to light the intricate ways in which sound—specifically singing, listening, and speaking—shapes gendered identities and exposes the nuanced interplay of power and privilege. Through a feminist interpretive practice, Sundar not only critiques established narratives but also offers new, liberatory imaginaries that challenge hegemonic discourses.

🎙️ Event Details:
📆 Date: April 04th, 2023
⏰ Time: 12:15 PM-1:30 PM
📍 Virtual Webinar
💻 Register Here: https://forms.gle/3Cs5fW6pEbbjgpXD7

🎙️Speaker

Pavitra Sundar, Professor, Hamilton College

🎙️Commentators

Neepa Majumdar, Associate Professor, University of Pittsburgh

Debashree Mukherjee, Associate Professor, Columbia University

🎙️Moderator

Douglas Haynes, Professor, Dartmouth College

Don’t miss this unique opportunity to register today and join us for a captivating discussion with Pavitra Sundar. 🌐📖🔍

Watch the zoom webinar recording here

Sponsored by the Department of Asian Societies, Cultures and Languages (ASCL) and the Bodas Family Endowment for South Asian Studies at Dartmouth College. 

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Conversations on South Asia with Robert Travers

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Tuesday, May 9 | 12:15–1:15 PM ET | Zoom

Register to attend: https://dartgo.org/conversations-travers

How did Mughal law shape Britain’s empire in India? How did imperial officials co-opt and transform Persianate approaches to law and justice? What influence did late-Mughal practices of petitioning and complaint have on colonial state formation?

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In Empires of Complaints: Mughal law and the making of British India, 1765–1793 (Cambridge University Press 2022), historian Robert Travers (Cornell University) explores these questions and employs Persian and English sources to offer a new history of early colonial statecraft. With a focus on revenue collection, taxation, and civil law, Travers recasts the history of law in this pivotal period of transition.

Join us to learn more.

Hayden Bellenoit (US Naval Academy) and Naveena Naqvi (University of British Columbia) will be joining the author for this discussion.

Elizabeth Lhost will moderate.

Register to attend the webinar: https://dartgo.org/conversations-travers

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Conversations on South Asia is sponsored by the Bodas Family Academic Programming Fund, the Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages Program, and the History Department at Dartmouth College.

All are welcome to attend.

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Conversations on South Asia with Jayita Sarkar

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Tuesday, April 11 | 12:15–1:15 PM ET | Zoom

Register to attend: https://dartgo.org/conversations-sarkar

For leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru, mastering nuclear technology was tied to domestic development and national independence. To boost India’s nuclear capacity, Nehru argued for India’s freedom of action and challenged the inequities of nonproliferation regimes. By maintaining strategic ambiguity in India’s dual-use nuclear program, Nehru and his successors appealed to domestic audiences while asserting India’s rights on a global stage.

In Ploughshares and Swords: India’s Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2022), author Jayita Sarkar explores these angles to reframe India’s nuclear program within broader geo- and techno-political frameworks.

Join us to learn more.

Itty Abraham (Arizona State University) and Nicholas L. Miller (Dartmouth College) will be joining the author for this discussion.

Elizabeth Lhost will moderate.

Register to attend the webinar: https://dartgo.org/conversations-sarkar

All are welcome to attend.

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Conversations on South Asia is sponsored by the Bodas Family Academic Programming Fund, the Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages Program, and the History Department at Dartmouth College.

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Conversations on South Asia with Shailaja Paik

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Tuesday, March 14 | 12:15–1:15 PM ET | Zoom

Register to attend: https://dartgo.org/conversations-paik

In Maharashtra, Tamasha is a popular genre of traveling theater performed by Dalits. Focusing on the everyday lives of Tamasha women, The Vulgarity of Caste: Dalits, Sexuality, and Humanity in Modern India provides the first intellectual and social history of Tamasha and its performers—who represent both desire and disgust in Indian society.

Drawing from interviews, recordings, and archival sources, Shailaja Paik (University of Cincinnati) shows how the sex-gender-caste complex shapes and defines Tamasha women’s lives and builds on and departs from Ambedkar-centered histories of caste oppression to focus on ordinary Dalit lives and struggles to claim manuski (human dignity).

Join us to hear more!

Rasika Ajotikar (SOAS, University of London) and Juned M. Shaikh (UC Santa Cruz) will be joining the author for this discussion.

Elizabeth Lhost will moderate.

Register to attend the webinar: https://dartgo.org/conversations-paik

All are welcome to attend.

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Conversations on South Asia is sponsored by the Bodas Family Academic Programming Fund, the Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages Program, and the History Department at Dartmouth College.

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Conversations on South Asia with Elora Halim Chowdhury

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Tuesday, February 14 | 12:15–1:15 PM ET | Zoom

Register to attend: https://dartgo.org/conversations-chowdhury

Cinematic media have long been important for remembering and memorializing the 1971 Bangladesh War of Liberation (or, Muktijuddho). They have also been important vehicles for critiquing and reconciling with war’s trauma. 

Analyzing Muktijuddho films through Black and transnational feminist frameworks, Elora Halim Chowdhury (University of Massachusetts Boston) considers the power and potential of human rights cinema. As Chowdhury shows, cinematic representations not only portray marginalized experiences but also put those experiences on a global stage. 

Film and media scholars Gwendolyn S. Kirk (Indiana University Bloomington) and Alka Kurian (University of Washington Bothell) will be joining the author for this discussion.

Elizabeth Lhost will moderate.

Book cover.

Register to attend the webinar: https://dartgo.org/conversations-chowdhury

All are welcome to attend.

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The Conversations on South Asia Series is sponsored by the Bodas Family Academic Programming Fund, the Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages Program, and the Department of History at Dartmouth College.

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Conversations on South Asia with Gregory Clines

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Tuesday, January 10 | 12:15-1:15 PM ET | Zoom

Register to attend: https://dartgo.org/conversations-clines

cover of "Jain Ramayana Narratives"

The Rāmāyaṇa—the story of Rām and the kidnapping of his beloved Sītā by the malevolent Rāvaṇa—is one of the world’s best-known epics. Translated, transformed, told, and retold for centuries, the tale remains an important touchstone for religious—and political—life across South Asia and in the diaspora.     

Yet for all its popularity, most associate the epic with Hindu religious traditions. What sense, then, can we make of Jain retellings? What moral, ethical, and political imaginings do these versions offer? 

Analyzing three Jain texts, Gregory Clines (Trinity University) offers some answers in his new book Jain Rāmāyaṇa Narratives: Moral Vision and Literary Innovation (Routledge Advances in Jaina Studies, 2022).

Join us on January 10 to learn more.   

Paula Richman (Emerita, Oberlin College) and Sohini Pillai (Kalamazoo College) will be joining the author for this discussion.

Elizabeth Lhost will moderate.

Register to attend: https://dartgo.org/conversations-clines

All are welcome to attend.

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The Conversations on South Asia Series is sponsored by the Bodas Family Academic Programming Fund, the Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages Program, and the Department of History at Dartmouth College.

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Conversations on South Asia with Tarini Bedi

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Tuesday, December 13 | 12:15–1:15 PM ET

Register to attend: https://dartgo.org/converstions-bedi

In Mumbai, the black and yellow taxi is an ubiquitous symbol of the city, its hustle, its grind, and its grit.

Focusing on the hereditary community of chillia taxi drivers, who have sustained the industry for over a century, Tarini Bedi (University of Illinois Chicago) explores how lives, livelihoods, mobility, and modernity are bound together in tangled webs of economics, politics, kinship, care.

How have taxi drivers sewn the webs that bind them to the city? And what are the strings that stitch them together today?

Join us to learn more.

Deepa Das Acevedo (University of Alabama Law School) and Biju Mathew (Rider University) will be joining the author for this discussion. 

Elizabeth Lhost will moderate.

Register to attend: https://dartgo.org/conversations-bedi

All are welcome to attend.

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The Conversations on South Asia Series is sponsored by the Bodas Family Academic Programming Fund, the Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages Program, and the Department of History at Dartmouth College.

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Conversations on South Asia with Elizabeth Thelen

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Tuesday, November 8 | 12:15–1:15 PM ET | Zoom

Register to attend: https://dartgo.org/conversations-thelen

How did diverse communities live and work in Rajasthan’s urban spaces? When did religion and politics create conflict? How did community and caste affect conflict negotiations? 

Focusing on the cities of Ajmer, Nagaur, and Pushkar, between the 16th and 18th centuries, Elizabeth Thelen (University of Exeter) explores these questions in her book Urban Histories of Rajasthan: Religion, Politics and Society (1550–1800) and calls on legal documents, state registers, and family archives to understand how diverse communities made urban society vibrant and resilient.

Join us to learn more!

Divya Cherian (Princeton University) and Usman Hamid (Hamilton College) will be joining the author for this discussion.

Elizabeth Lhost will moderate.

Register to attend: https://dartgo.org/conversations-thelen

All are welcome to attend.

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The Conversations on South Asia Series is sponsored by the Bodas Family Academic Programming Fund, the Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages Program, and the Department of History at Dartmouth College.