ECMSAS Accepted Panel Suggestions 17 to 24
For details of papers, please click on the title of the panel you are interested in. For further information on the panels, please contact the panel convenors directly, using the mail address(es) listed under each panel.Panel 17
Name: Dr Deana Heath
Affiliation: School of Histories and Humanities, Trinity College, Dublin
Panel Title: Censorship, Subjectivity, and Subversion: Cultural Regulation in India from the
Abstract: Scholars of censorship have largely abandoned the focus on the legal constraints upon speech to focus on power itself as an object of study - of how it is constituted, of the intersections of resistance and domination through which it is exercised, and of how discursive and disciplinary practices are enacted. Yet in spite of the centrality of discourse in framing postcolonial approaches to the study of South Asian history, the study of censorship in India, unlike other forms of cultural-moral regulation, has received relatively little scholarly attention. Focusing on both print and visual cultures, this panel aims to address a number of key questions. How has censorship operated as a regulatory regime in India from the pre-colonial era to the present? In what ways were norms of cultural regulation in India transformed by colonialism, and what have been the legacies of these transformations? What new norms, furthermore, have emerged in post-colonial India? Exploring such questions will, it is hoped, broaden our historical understanding not only of the hierarchies of production, power and knowledge that have constituted both colonial and post-colonial regimes, but also of the role of censorship in the construction of colonial and post-colonial subjects.
Email: heathd@tcd.ie
Panel 18
Name: Dr Anindita Ghosh
Affiliation: University of Manchester
Panel Title: WRITING THE SOCIAL: POPULAR LITERARY TRADITIONS IN SOUTH ASIA
Abstract: That literature and the social are mutually constituted and inform our understandings of contemporary cultural discourses is beyond doubt. Language and expression, genre and rhetoric, cannon and taste, motifs and tropes - all need to be located within the multiple contexts of literary practice, production and consumption, ideology and imagination, as well as power and patronage networks. Reading literature as social text is a historical methodology that has only begun to emerge in recent writings on South Asia. And yet the few serious studies that have materialised limit themselves to elite and courtly traditions. The rich domain of the quotidian and the popular remain relatively unexplored in historical writing. This panel seeks to investigate the social space of popular literature in South Asia - both written and oral - by exploring the social imaginaries that writers and their audience inhabit. In doing so it attempts to cross the boundaries between history, literature and anthropology in order to cast new light on the familiar and not-so-familiar songs and stories, poetry and music, both performed and written.
Email: a.ghosh@manchester.ac.uk
Panel 19
Name 1: Montaut Annnie
Name 2: Maheux Laurent
Affiliation 1: INALCO Paris
Affiliation 2: INALCO Paris
Panel Title: The concept of continuity and its relevance for Indian literary culture
This Panel has now merged with Panel 16, Religion, Literature and Film in South Asia and the South Asian Diaspora
Panel 20
Name 1: Dr. Britta Ohm
Name 2: Dr. Nadja-Christina Schneider
Affiliation 1: Europa Universität Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany
Affiliation 2: Humboldt University Berlin, Institute for Asian and African Studies, Germany
Panel Title: Medialised Realities in South Asia
Abstract: Media have in debates on globalisation often been looked at in terms of enabling new forms and expressions of cultural identities that supersede and even replace political, cultural and legal organisations of belonging and citizenship. More recently, however, it is becoming increasingly obvious that globalising media play a vital role in reframing notions and manifestations of nation, state, community and history. Moreover, it has itself global implications that media cannot be looked at any more in terms of an 'additional' factor that 'represents' an outer 'reality', but that they have also in South Asia since the early 1980s started to become integral agents in generating "medialised realities". They are today key-carriers of performative politics as much as of its critique, of enabling new forms of expression and witnessing as well as of their restrictions, and of opening new possibilities of representation as much as of their limits. Simultaneously, processes of digitalisation, transnationalisation, commercialisation and their legal ramifications as well as the growing convergence between different media (print, radio, cinema, television the interaction between media and law, internet and other new media) are rapidly changing South Asian societies.
Against this background, we invite papers that draw upon these developments, taking into account the staging of media events, dynamics of inclusion and exclusion, the interaction between media and law, the de- and reterritorialisation of national and cultural belonging, the contestation of history and the role media play in elections, in the generation of 'truths' and 'facts', in the creation and perception of crises as well as in the resolution or deepening of conflict.
Email 1: ohm@zedat.fu-berlin.de
Email 2: schneidernc@web.de
Panel 21
Name: Dr. Allan Bullion
Affiliation: The Open University
Panel Title: Sri Lanka
Details: This panel will examine the contemporary political situation in Sri Lanka and the prospects for peace or civil war, given the breakdown of the 2002 peace process.
Email: alan.bullion@informa.com
Panel 22
Name: Dr. A.SOMASHEKAR
Affiliation: CHAIRMAN DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY KARNATAKA STATE OPEN UNIVERSITY MANASAGANGOTHRI MYSORE 570 006
Panel Title: KARNATAKA STUDIES; FRAGMENTED POLITY, ITS FORMATION , LEGITIMIZATION AND UPWARD
Abstract: The present Panel makes an attempt to focus on 'Fragmented Polity' which emerges around 1650 A.D after the complete disappearance of the Vijayanagara Empire. The fragmented polity refers to the formation of political power at strategic places in south India,with a view to protect the people by drawing resources from the surroundings. south India between 1650-1761 was a network of feudal fragments which were generally called "Paleyapattus". In the absence of traditional warrior class,the adventurous among the backward classes like Beda[Hunter], Kuruba[Shepherd], Gowda[Farmer]. Nayaka, Lingayats and others with their agrarian background established feudal fragments which were legitimised by the Brahmin and non-Brahmin religious authorities. The sources pertaining to this period are available in plenty in the means of archaeological and literary works , which were not utilised by the scholars. Along with these sources kannada kaifiyats which were collected by colonel Collins Macenzie a servant of East India Company ,which are the records of local narratives.These sources throw light on the vibrating activities of the locality chiefs and their subjects in a period of transition with particular reference to local history, economy, society, culture and also on folklore, legends, rituals , castes and their identities.Besides, these sources provide very interesting incites related to upward mobility of the backward classes in the fragmented political structure.One Kannada kaifiyat gives fascinated details regarding the construction of forts, rituals, ceremonies, divisions and other details. No other source in south India gives the inner details of this type as the kaifiyats. The fall of Kote was the fall of paleyagars. Inside Kote , Danda and Dharma were highly harmonised with all its varieties. The agrarian surplus around the Kote sustained it. Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan starting from SriRangapatna as a focal point went all over South India with a view to eliminate these feudal fragments and established a Unified Polity and there by paved the way for smooth take over by the British East India Company around 1800 A.D.
Email: shekharsima71@yahoo.co.in
Panel 23
Name 1: Dr. Kim A. Wagner
Name 2: Anastasia Piliavsky
Affiliation 1: History, King's College, Cambridge
Affiliation 2: Anthropology, University of Oxford
Panel Title: Crime and Punishment in South Asia
Abstract: Crime and Punishment in South Asia
It is now more than two decades since Anand A. Yang brought together a number of articles by prominent scholars working on the subject of historical crime and criminality in British India, thereby producing a central work of reference within the field [Anand A. Yang (ed.) Crime and Criminality in British India (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1985); with contributions by John R. MacLane, F. Bruce Robinson JR., David Arnold, Edith S. Brandstadter, Anand A. Yang., Stewart N. Gordon, and Sandria Freitag]. It is time to take stock, and this panel will bring together the latest research on crime and punishment in pre-colonial, colonial and modern South Asia, across the disciplines. The outcome of the panel will be an edited volume, which reflects the recent academic developments and brings the state of the field up to date.
This panel invites papers relating to crime and punishment in the widest sense, including specific categories such as dacoity, thuggee, Criminal Tribes, political prisoners (and other criminalized identities, practices and events); as well as the politics and nature of pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial police, legal and penal systems in South Asia. The scope of the panel is not limited to the British colonial period but welcomes contributions addressing issues of transition, continuity and paradigm-shifts across the 1757-1947 divide and between different disciplines. Participants are encouraged to directly address historiographical aspects and consider the theoretical and methodological implications of their work in relation to the wider subject. By bringing together historians, anthropologists, literary critics and others, it is the ambition that the panel will be able to approach a broader range of issues and engage with the overall subject of crime and punishment in a genuinely interdisciplinary manner. Contributions from all subjects are welcome.
So far the following people have expressed their interest in participating in the panel:
Dr. Clare Anderson, University of Leicester
Sanchari Dutta, University of Oxford
Thomas Andrew Lloyd, University of Edinburgh
Roeland de Wilde, LSE
Dr. Nirmal Kumar, University of Delhi
Email 1: kaw32@cam.ac.uk
Email 2: anastasia.piliavsky@anthro.ox.ac.uk
Panel 24
Name: Md Mizanur Rahman
Affiliation: National University of Singapore
Panel Title: Migration in South Asia: Causes, Patterns and Consequences
Abstract: Movements of population in contemporary South Asia are complex and diverse in scale, composition, sources and destination. Although South Asian countries are principally labour-contributing countries for the labour-starved economies of Middle East and Southeast Asia and even beyond in the case of skilled migration or permanent migration, considerable population movements also take place among countries in South Asia in the form of cross-border migration of labour, refugees, students, family migration and so on. There is a paucity of research on different forms of contemporary cross-border migration in South Asia. In addition, instead of explaining cross-border migration as a livelihood strategy, as broader migration research in other parts of Asia like Southeast or East Asia often does, it is often explained from the narrow trafficking perspective concluding the existence of different forms of victimization and suggesting some policy recommendations that concerned countries are often unwilling to accept. Therefore, there is an urgency to look into the contemporary cross-border migration in South Asia from different perspectives, for instance, historical, international relations, sociological, and political science perspectives. Along with the genesis of different types of cross-border migration, this panel will especially highlight the processes and consequences of such migration on both host and home countries.
The proposed panel invites the submissions of original papers by both young and established scholars addressing the different topics in the broad areas of migration in South Asia. Papers addressing ethnic and cultural conflict/diversity brought by migrants, international politics as well as political economy of migration and comparison of different migrant groups are especially welcomed
Email: mizan@nus.edu.sg