Category: Uncategorized

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The Political Outsider by Srirupa Roy

Thursday, Feb 27| 12:15 PM – 1:30 PM ET | Zoom

Register to attend:  https://dartmouth.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_B4dheWVFQ9ypfqxUsZuZFQ

Join us for an engaging Zoom event with Srirupa Roy as she discusses The Political Outsider: Indian Democracy and the Lineages of Populism. In this illuminating book, Roy examines the emergence of the political outsider as a prominent figure in Indian democracy, emphasizing their role in “curative democracy” aimed at remedying a fractured political system. By analyzing the pivotal events of the long 1970s, including the suspension and restoration of democracy, she reveals how these concepts intertwine with contemporary populism and authoritarianism. Roy’s work prompts us to reconsider democracy through the lens of the Indian experience, offering critical insights into the broader trajectory of global democratic politics.

🎙️ Event Details:
📆 Date: February 27th, 2024
⏰ Time: 12:15 PM-1:30 PM
📍 Virtual Webinar
💻 Register Here: https://dartmouth.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_B4dheWVFQ9ypfqxUsZuZFQ

🎙️Speaker

Srirupa Roy, Professor and Chair of State and Democracy at the Centre for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS), University of Göttingen

🎙️Commentators

Ruchi Chaturvedi, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Cape Town

Kanchan Chandra, Professor of Politics, New York University

🎙️Moderator

Curt Gambetta, Postdoctoral Fellow, Society of Fellows, and Lecturer, Department of Art History

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

QR code (leads to registration form) on the poster.  

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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Places in Knots by Martin Saxer

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

Register to attend:  https://dartmouth.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_8phz3XcYQcWvTWUGIMJZug

Join us for an insightful Zoom event with Martin Saxer as he presents Places in Knots: Remoteness and Connectivity in the Himalayas. In this thought-provoking book, Saxer explores how Himalayan communities maintain their connections across multiple places, challenging the notion of the region as merely remote and hidden. By tracing the journeys of mobile Himalayans around the globe, he reveals these movements as an extension of community rather than disconnection. Saxer argues that leaving home does not break community bonds; instead, it strengthens them, drawing ties tighter in a fascinating interplay of remoteness and connectivity.

🎙️ Event Details:
📆 Date: January 15th, 2024
⏰ Time: 12:15 PM-1:30 PM
📍 Virtual Webinar
💻 Register Here: https://dartmouth.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_8phz3XcYQcWvTWUGIMJZug

🎙️Speaker

Martin Saxer, Research Group Leader ERC Starting Grant Project Remoteness & Connectivity: Highland Asia in the World

🎙️Commentators

Geoff Childs, Professor of Sociocultural Anthropology, Washington University, St. Louis

Alice Millington, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, St. Johns College, Oxford University

🎙️Moderator

Sienna R. Craig, Jane & Raphael Bernstein Professor in Asian Studies, Professor, Anthropology, Dartmouth College 

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

QR code (leads to registration form) on the poster.  

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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Bankrolling Empire Labour by Sudev Sheth

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

Register to attend:  https://dartmouth.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Ly2DTLl8TY6RBUuAt-9bLQ

Join us for an engaging Zoom event with Sudev Sheth as he discusses Bankrolling Empire: Family Fortunes and Political Transformation in Mughal India. This compelling book reveals how the Jhaveri family of diamond dealers skillfully navigated the decline of the Mughal Empire through strategic use of wealth and information. Sheth highlights the vital role of Gujarati bankers in shaping governance during a transformative period, drawing on diverse sources such as Persian diaries and Gujarati poetry. The enduring legacy of the Jhaveri family—still a billion-dollar firm today—offers fresh insights into the interplay between state power and social change, prompting us to reflect on lessons relevant to our contemporary world.

🎙️ Event Details:
📆 Date: January 16th, 2025
⏰ Time: 12:15 PM-1:30 PM
📍 Virtual Webinar
💻 Register Here: https://dartmouth.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Ly2DTLl8TY6RBUuAt-9bLQ

🎙️Speaker

Sudev Sheth, Senior Lecturer in History, Joseph H. Lauder Institute of Management & International Studies and Department of History, University of Pennsylvania

🎙️Commentators

Choon Hwee Koh, Assistant Professor, History, UCLA

Nandini Chatterjee, Professor of Indian History and Culture, Oxford University Berlin

🎙️Moderator

Douglas E. Haynes, Professor Emeritus, History, Dartmouth College

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

QR code (leads to registration form) on the poster.  

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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Dust on the Throne by Douglas Ober

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

Register to attend:  https://dartmouth.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_B4dheWVFQ9ypfqxUsZuZFQ

You are formally invited to a captivating Zoom book event featuring author Douglas Ober. In his new book, Dust on the Throne, Ober challenges the conventional narrative that Buddhism disappeared from India between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, only to be revived by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar in 1956. Instead, Ober uncovers the crucial yet overlooked role that Indians played in shaping modern global Buddhism long before Ambedkar’s conversion. Drawing on a wealth of archival and temple materials from across South Asia, Dust on the Throne explores Buddhist religious dynamics in the context of colonial expansion, intra-Asian connectivity, and the writings of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Indian thinkers. Ober’s work sheds light on Buddhism’s significant socio-political influence and intellectual legacy in modern Indian history, reframing the place of Buddhism in the subcontinent.

🎙️ Event Details:
📆 Date: November 12th, 2024
⏰ Time: 12:15 PM-1:30 PM
📍 Virtual Webinar
💻 Register Here: https://dartmouth.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_B4dheWVFQ9ypfqxUsZuZFQ

🎙️Speaker

Douglas Ober, Lecturer in History, Fort Lewis College and Honorary Research Associate in the Centre for India and South Asia Research at the University of British Columbia

🎙️Commentators

V. Geetha, Editorial Director, Tara Books

Christopher Queen, Lecturer on the Study of Religion and Dean of Students for Continuing Education (retired), Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University

🎙️Moderator

Reiko Ohnuma, Robert 1932 and Barbara Black Professor of Religion, Dartmouth College

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

QR code (leads to registration form) on the poster.  

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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Pious Labour by Amanda Lanzillo

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

Register to attend:  https://dartmouth.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_wHyRtpUmRRCRbbr3BvcW-w

You are formally invited to an illuminating Zoom book event featuring author Amanda Lanzillo. In her new book, Pious Labor, Lanzillo explores how, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, laborers across northern India found themselves negotiating rapid industrial change, emerging technologies, and class hierarchies. In response to these changes, Indian Muslim artisans asserted the connection between their religion and labor, using the popular press to redefine Islamic traditions. Focusing on metalsmiths, stonemasons, tailors, press workers, and carpenters, Pious Labor explores colonial-era social and technological changes from the workers’ perspectives. Amanda Lanzillo reveals how the colonial marginalization of these artisans shapes the ongoing exclusion of laboring voices. Using Urdu technical manuals and community histories, she highlights the materiality and cultural agency of artisans, addressing a significant gap in South Asian history.

🎙️ Event Details:
📆 Date: October 15th, 2024
⏰ Time: 12:15 PM-1:30 PM
📍 Virtual Webinar
💻 Register Here: https://dartmouth.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_wHyRtpUmRRCRbbr3BvcW-w

🎙️Speaker

Amanda Lanzillo, Assistant Professor, Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago

🎙️Commentators

Douglas Haynes, Professor Emeritus, Department of History, Dartmouth College

Razak Khan, Research Fellow in Global History, Department of History, Free University Berlin

🎙️Moderator

Curt Gambetta, Postdoctoral Fellow, Society of Fellows, and Lecturer, Department of Art History

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

QR code (leads to registration form) on the poster.  

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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The Promise of Piety By Arsalan Khan

Tuesday, Oct 1| 12:45 PM – 2:00 PM ET | Zoom

Register to attend: https://dartmouth.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_kB4-x-G9TJiaK8yPOhpQ4A

You are formally invited to an insightful Zoom book event featuring author Arsalan Khan. In his new book, The Promise of Piety, Khan explores the fervent dedication to face-to-face preaching (dawat) among Pakistani Tablighis, practitioners of the transnational Islamic piety movement, the Tablighi Jamaat. This movement argues that Muslims have forsaken their religious obligations for worldly distractions, leading to a moral crisis manifesting in fractured familial, national, and global Islamic relationships. The Tablighis assert that dawat is the sacred means to restore Islamic virtue and bring Muslims back to their faith. Khan delves into how this form of pious relationality, embedded in both ritual and everyday practice, aims to transform private and public life, while also examining the potential and limits of creating an Islamic moral order in the face of political fragmentation and violence in postcolonial Pakistan.

🎙️ Event Details:
📆 Date: October 1st, 2024
⏰ Time: 12:45 PM-2:00 PM
📍 Virtual Webinar
💻 Register Here: https://dartmouth.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_kB4-x-G9TJiaK8yPOhpQ4A

🎙️Speaker

Arsalan Khan, Associate Professor, Anthropology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

🎙️Commentators

Shenila Khoja-Moolji, Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani Chair of Muslim Societies and Associate Professor, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University

Attiya Ahmad, Associate Professor, Anthropology and International Affairs, George Washington University

🎙️Moderator

Faiza Rahman, Postdoctoral Fellow, Society of Fellows, and Lecturer, Department of Religion

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

QR code (leads to registration form) on the poster.  

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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CFP: Dartmouth Summer History Institute: Illness in Asia: A Comparative History

We invite applications for participation in the third Dartmouth Summer History Institute (Thursday, June 2–Saturday, June 4). The theme for 2022 is Illnesses in Asia: A Comparative History.

The History Institute aims to bring together the most promising young scholars working on the history of Asian medicine and to read workshop pieces of their historical writing as they embark on the transition from dissertation to book. Five to seven senior historians of Asian medicine will join the workshop as mentors and discussants. We are interested in all aspects of illnesses and healing, including their links to political, social, economic, cultural, and intellectual developments. We welcome scholars researching East Asia, Northeast Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Applicants should be in the process of completing their Ph.D. dissertations or in the early stages of revising their Ph.D.s as book manuscripts. (Students expecting to complete their Ph.D.s in Spring or Summer of 2022 are encouraged to apply.)

Accepted participants will furnish drafts of their work, including an introduction to their monograph project and a working dissertation/book chapter central to or representative of the larger historical intervention to be workshopped. The draft should not exceed 50 pages and must be submitted by April 1, 2022. In addition to workshopping individual pieces of writing, the Institute will include a variety of fora (receptions, dinners, and lectures) to discuss theoretical and methodological issues in the company of invited senior scholars. For information about History Institute workshops held in the past, please visit http://sites.dartmouth.edu/historyinstitute2017/

Participation in the Institute includes travel, board, and lodging. The workshop will be held in person, but the current pandemic will be carefully monitored; adaptation will be made if necessary. To apply, send a CV and two-page abstract describing the project by February 15, 2022, to History.Institute [at] dartmouth.edu. Please contact Professor Soyoung Suh (soyoung.suh [at] dartmouth.edu) with any inquiries.

Organizers

  • Soyoung Suh |Associate Professor of History | Korea Foundation Professor | Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages Program
  • Douglas Haynes | Professor of History
  • Erqi Cheng | Lecturer of History
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Announcement: Welcome our Bodas Family Academic Programming Fund South Asian Studies Fellows

The South Asian Studies Collective is excited to welcome Bryanna Entwistle and Sri Sathvik Rayala as Bodas Family Academic Programming Fund South Asian Studies Fellows for the 2021–22 academic year! Their biographies are below:

Bryanna Entwistle

My name is Bryanna Entwistle, and I am currently a third-year student at Dartmouth College. I’m double majoring in Government and History while minoring in Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages. I was born in Hong Kong and raised in both Mumbai and Singapore, so the region is close to my heart! On-campus, I’m involved in the Sugarplum Dance Troupe, do research on the Vietnam War with the Dartmouth Digital History Initiative, and have engaged deeply with the Center for Social Impact. I’m looking forward to serving as one of the Bodas Family Academic Programming Fund South Asian Studies Fellows for the upcoming school year!

Sri Sathvik Rayala

Greetings! My name is Sri Sathvik Rayala, and I am currently a second-year student at Dartmouth College with a multi-disciplinary interest (politics, international affairs, economics, history, philosophy, and religion) in South Asian Studies. I am presently intending to double-major in “Government Modified with Economics and Philosophy” and “Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages” with a focus on South and Southeast Asia. On-campus, I’m involved with the World Outlook, the Dartmouth Undergraduate Law Journal, and the Dartmouth Political Times, and I’m also part of two off-campus academic reading groups concerned with the study of Vaishnava traditions and Manipravalam texts of South Asia. I’m eagerly looking forward to serving as one of the Bodas Family Academic Programming Fund South Asian Studies Fellows with the South Asian Studies Collective for the 2021–22 academic year.

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Announcement: Publications by our members (Summer 2021)

The South Asian Studies Collective at Dartmouth has the following publications and announcements to share.

Anthropology Professor Sienna Craig and collaborators published the preliminary results of their SSRC-funded research into the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on members of New York City’s Himalayan communities in the following essays:

MALS program graduate, Aneeq Ejaz, published a review, titled “How we reached here,” discussing SherAli Tareen’s book, Defending Muḥammad in Modernity in Pakistan’s The News on Sunday (August 8, 2021).

During the past year, History Professor Douglas Haynes has continued to work on the history of advertisement and consumption. His new publications in this area include an essay on “Vernacular Capitalism, Advertising and the Bazaar in Early Twentieth-century Western India,” in the volume he coedited with Ajay Gandhi, Barbara Harriss-White, and Sebastian Schwecke (read the announcement about that volume here), along with contributions to two other volumes:

He also published an article on how Gandhi formulated his concept of celibacy in interaction with the emerging field of sexual science and the birth control movement: “Gandhi, Brahmacharya and Sexual Science, 1919–38,” South Asia: A Journal of South Asian Studies, 43 (2) (2020): 1163–78. https://doi.org/10.1080/00856401.2020.1826644. He is currently finishing a book on professional advertising in the interwar period.

To support a new project on the formation of the Indian Institutes of Management in Ahmedabad and Calcutta in the 1960s—and their impact on the character of managerial capitalism in India—Professor Haynes was also awarded a four-month grant from the American Institute of Indian Studies.

Postdoctoral Fellow Elizabeth Lhost published an essay, “Of Horizontal Exchanges and Inter-Islamic Inquiries,” as part of a recent Kitabkhana forum on Faiz Ahmed’s Afghanistan Rising. The piece provides a methodological reflection on Ahmed’s book by analyzing Indian Mufti Kifayatullah’s 1924 fatwa on the question of women’s education in Afghanistan. The essay is available in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 41(2) (2021): 257–61. https://doi.org/10.1215/1089201X-9127180.

Dr. Lhost also continues to work on a digital database project tied to the legal history of the Indian Princely States, which received a grant from the American Institute of Indian Studies Digital India Learning Initiative. This database, known as IP-SO-LHA (Indian Princely States Online Legal History Archive), is planning to launch the results of its first phase of work in Fall 2021. Dartmouth History students Matthew Krivan and Womsikuk James have been key contributors to project.

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April 13: Lecture by Suraj Yengde

“Caste as Race, Race as Caste: The Value of Thinking Across Cultures in Combating Racial Injustice”

A Lecture by Dr. Suraj Yengde , Senior Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School

Tuesday, April 13, 2021 | 4:00 PM (EDT)  |  Zoom

Event Description:

Can race and caste be juxtaposed? Can they be replaced? What is the future of oppressed groups in light of anti-caste and anti-racism struggles? Is there a new idiom that could connect disparate groups oppressed by their color, class, and caste?   This lecture will discuss these issues as it discusses the contemporaneity of the 21st century. It will explicitly address Isabel Wilkerson’s intervention in a much longer intellectual history of connecting caste and race in both the United States and South Asia.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Suraj Yengde is currently a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. He holds a research associate position with the department of African and African American Studies, a non-resident fellow position at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, and is part of the founding team of Initiative for Institutional Anti-Racism and Accountability (IARA) at Harvard University. He has studied on four continents (Asia, Africa, Europe, North America), and is India’s first Dalit Ph.D. holder from an African university (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg). Suraj is the author of the bestseller Caste Matters and co-editor of award winning anthology The Radical in Ambedkar. He has published in multiple languages in the field of caste, race, ethnicity studies, and inter-regional labor migration in the global south. Currently, he is involved in developing a critical theory of Dalit and Black Studies.   He has been named as the “Most influential Young Dalit” by Zee and has received many other awards and honors.

This event is hosted by Professor Douglas E. Haynes.