ECMSAS Accepted Panel Suggestions 9 to 16
To view details of papers, please click on the title of the panel you are interested in. For further information, please contact the panel convenors directly, using the mail address(es) listed under each panel.Panel 9
Name 1: William Radice
Name 2: Kerstin Andersson
Affiliation 1: SOAS, University of London
Affiliation 2: Dept. of Social Anthropology, University of Gothenburg
Panel Title: Bengal Studies
Abstract: The ECMSAS Bengal Studies panel has through the years developed into an important forum for scholars working on Bengal and Bengali studies. As the number of scholars is quite limited and the group is scattered all over the world, the panel provides a meeting point and an opportunity to share research for all with an interest in the culture and society of West Bengal and Bangladesh - and the Bengali diaspora worldwide. The interdisciplinary approach of the panel welcomes papers on diverse topics such as past and present, literature and media, religion and secularity, women and men, tradition and culture, and on theory and methods in a specifically Bengali context. Papers on all aspects of Bengal will be considered, but the common denominator should be fieldwork amongst Bengali speakers or the use of Bengali language sources. Some basic questions that proposed papers could address are: What makes Bengal distinct? Does the region have a unity that overrides political or religious divisions? What particular cultural and intellectual contributions has Bengal made to the subcontinent and the wider world? What makes Bengal worthy of study?
Email 1: wr@soas.ac.uk
Email 2: tinni.andersson@telia.com
Panel 10
Name 1: Carole Spary
Name 2: Andrew Wyatt
Affiliation 1: University of Warwick
Affiliation 2: University of Bristol
Panel Title: Gender and Party Politics in South Asia
Abstract: This panel explores the intersection of party politics and gender in South Asia. The coverage offered by the existing literature is somewhat patchy. Debates over quotas have been discussed extensively and the contribution of prominent female leaders has also been analysed. There is also a growing literature on gendered political participation at the local level. Basic data on women candidates in elections is available and has been monitored. However there is less work that acknowledges the relevance of socially constructed gender roles in framing and constituting possibilities for political action and enabling or constraining the agency of political actors.
The convenors invite abstracts for papers that consider the link between gender and party politics in South Asia. The papers might be comparative or confine themselves to single national or local cases. Participants might like to consider the following questions:
- How do national politicians and state level party leaders incorporate gendered policies and rhetoric into their strategies for winning power and governing?
- What masculine or feminine norms are used to frame political issues and assumptions?
- How uneven is the social terrain on which local politics is played out? In what ways might social norms based on gender reinforce assumptions about power holding in the locality and condition access to that power? In what ways are networks of political power structured by gendered norms of association? For example, to what extent is the participation of men and women in party political structures and networks constituted through gendered norms? What social norms determine access to local party organisations? Are these norms changing? What implications for the activities of other political movements/state bodies have for the gendered norms adhered to by political parties?
- In what ways does gender coincide with caste, class, and religion to structure access to party politics?
Email 1: c.spary@warwick.ac.uk
Email 2: A.K.J.Wyatt@bristol.ac.uk
Panel 11
Name 1: Fabrizio M. Ferrari
Name 2: Perundevi Srinivasan
Affiliation 1: University of Chester
Affiliation 2: George Washington University
Panel Title: Disease, possession and healing in South Asia
Abstract: Debates over South Asian indigenous understanding of disease as forms of possession, originally emerging within the study of 'alternative' forms of medicine, have come to gain visibility in and around discussions of social and religious matters as well as the constitution of community and gendered identities. As such, the study of goddesses, gods and spirits as both cause and remedy of a variety of diseases (smallpox, cholera, malaria, syphilis, barrenness and, more recently, Kyasanur Forest Disease, drug addiction and HIV/AIDS) has marked a significant shift in an ethics/politics of responding to epidemics.
With the insurgence of new pandemics, the time is ripe for a consolidation and promotion of indigenous ways to understanding physical and mental imbalances through diverse conceptualisations of the divine. From the creation of new deities to phenomena of re-writing myths of popular goddesses, South Asia finds herself amidst the process of modifying plague-deities in order to cope with new threats. This endeavour gains particular importance in the face of the largely Westernised character of many NGOs, governmental educational programmes and corporate hospitals.
We invite scholars and graduate students to examine the current understanding of diseases/epidemics in South Asian communities (Hindus, Muslims, tribals, Sikhs, Christians, Jains, Jews, etc.), with special reference to popular tradition. The panel will also raise and address theoretical and methodological issues such as the epistemic force of the category of 'disease' as it is currently employed in scholarship of and popular conceptions in South Asia.
Email 1: f.ferrari@chester.ac.uk
Email 2: latadevi@gwu.edu
Panel 12
Name 1: Johannes Beltz
Name 2: Andreas Doctor
Affiliation 1: Museum Rietberg Zurich
Affiliation 2: Centre for Buddhist Studies Kathmandu
Panel Title: Hagiographies: Topics, Canonization and Interculturality
Details: Oral as well as written hagiographies are texts about eminent personalities and their virtues (Muslim saints, Buddhist Bodhisattvas, Christian martyrs, statesmen, poets, philosophers etc.). As such they tell more about the way people envision these particular persons than about the actual/historic person behind these projections. The panel attempts to discuss the four following points:
1) Hagiographies treat certain topics (self sacrifice, modesty, egalitarianism, nationalism, altruism, etc.) and thus establish types of heroes (leader, sage, social reformer, spiritual man, freedom fighter, etc.). The panel should provide a systematic look into the variety of these topics and their manifold meanings.
2) Hagiographies are not static, authoritative or exclusive texts unless they are canonised by an institution. In most cases several hagiographic narratives coexist and compete with one another. Hagiographies should therefore be considered as discourses, as forms of social interaction. The panel contributors seek to explore the contradictory processes of canonization.
3) What makes hagiographic texts interesting is that they permanently cross cultural and religious boundaries. In doing so, they incorporate new topics. Figures change their characters and receive new personalities. Exotic fantasies and theological speculations are mixed with local traditions, esoteric speculations and chiliastic hopes. An outcome of this panel will be a comparative analysis of these specific intercultural texts, for instance the European narratives about Tagore or Gandhi or the Indian narratives about Napoleon or Hitler.
4) As religious expressions of the societies and cultures in which they originate, hagiographies represent a rich source for understanding social and cultural aspects of religion that typically are left untreated or ignored in other forms of religious literature. In this way hagiographical studies inform the study of religion by providing an important balance to the classical and clerical expressions of religion contained in the canonical literature. This panel seeks to highlight the richness of the hagiographical genre as a primary source for broad appreciation and understanding of religion in its interplay with social and cultural structures.
PANEL 6: Hagiographies: Topics, Canonization and Interculturality
Panel Report: Hagiographies: Topics, Canonization and Interculturality
This panel is thought as a continuation of the previous ECMSAS (2006 Leiden and 2004 Lund). It would be the third meeting. Let me add that the panel in Leiden was well attended by scholars from a variety of geographical regions, study areas and disciplines. Apart from the speakers, the panel also benefited from an interested and lively audience, which further contributed to many fruitful dialogues and discussions. At the conclusion it was decided to apply for a continuation of this panel at the next ECMSAS in 2008. From the paper contributions of this year's panel preliminary discussions for possible joint publication was also initiated.
Email 1: Johannes.beltz@zuerich.ch
Email 2: andreas@wlink.com.np
Panel 13
Name: Nicole Weickgenannt
Affiliation: Manchester Metropolitan University
Panel Title: History and the South Asian Novel written in English
Abstract: This panel proposes to explore the representation of history in the South Asian novel in English. Papers will study the narrativisation of history in fiction and historiography from an interdisciplinary perspective and employ critical and cultural theory in innovative ways.
Dr Nicole Weickgenannt intends to discuss the representation of dalits in twentieth-century Indian novels. Dr Anastasia Valassopoulos, English lecturer at the University of Manchester, will explore Partition novels. Dalia Said Mostafa, a PhD student at the University of Manchester, intends to discuss Kartography by the Pakistani author Kamila Shamsie in relation to Walter Benjamins conceptualisation of historical time. Letizia Alterno, a PhD student at the University of Manchester, will give a paper on Raja Raos novels.
If the panel is accepted, we will issue a call for papers on the weekly mailing list hosted by the University of Pennsylvanias English Department which is the main source of information on conferences for the global community of academics and postgraduate students in literary studies. This would both help publicise the event and encourage the involvement of academics from a subject area which has been less well connected to the interdisciplinary network of South Asianists.
Email: nicoleweickgenannt@yahoo.co.uk
Panel 14
Name 1: Dr Francesca Orsini
Name 2: Prof. Polly O'Hanlon
Affiliation 1: SOAS
Affiliation 2: University of Oxford
Panel Title: Darbar, daftar, khanqah, math
Abstract: Many authors and their patrons inhabited domains which we now see as distinct: trade, politics, warfare, administrative service and religious office. Within Sultanate, Mughal and Rajput polities, however, the court was but one site of literary patronage and production. There were other significant nodes at which texts of various kinds — poetry, histories, biographies and self-accounts, moral and political discourses, polemics, satires - were generated, transmitted, and exchanged, as distinct ideas of tradition (political, literary, religious) emerged and evolved.
This panel aims at exploring the connections between domains and languages, in particular by focusing on individuals and genres who inhabited more than one domain—courtiers, merchants, military men, pandits, gosains, Sufis and munshis as both patrons and poets.
By examining the ways in which writers chose their linguistic registers, even their languages, according to the conventions of particular domains, we hope to develop a better understanding both of the social roles and of the literary/intellectual production of these important groups of interlocutors. Study of these groups, who wrote very much at the interface between cosmopolitan and vernacular literary forms, should also offer new insights into the wider history of regional languages emerging during this period.
We would like to ask the following questions:
- Were particular genres and registers which developed at one site transformed if/when they were taken up in another context and social configuration? (examples)
- Did authors and patrons who inhabited more than one domain and language and moved between them adapt their idiom and register accordingly, and/or did they also evolve hybrid varieties?
- How did the mobility of people, genres and registers between domains and between languages shape the literary corpus of e.g. Bengali, Braj Bhasha and Persian: We need only think of Persian and Avadhi masnavis, of Hindavi dohas and padas as they moved between Sufis and Sants, and Braj bhasha padas as they moved back and forth between Braj country and the sub-imperial courts of the Mughal period.
Email 1: fo@soas.ac.uk
Email 2: rosalind.ohanlon@orinst.ox.ac.uk
Panel 15
Name: Jacqueline Suthren Hirst
Affiliation: University of Manchester, UK
Panel Title: Sanskrit Tradition in the Modern World
Abstract: This panel would form a special session of the Sanskrit Tradition in the Modern World Symposium held annually in the UK. Papers are invited which explore adaptations of Sanskrit and Sanskrit-related traditions in modern South Asian or diaspora contexts. Contributions from scholars outside the UK who are not normally able to attend the one day seminar will be particularly welcomed.
Email: jacqueline.hirst@manchester.ac.uk
Panel 16
Name 1: Diana Dimitrova
Name 2: Thomas de Bruijn
Affiliation 1: Michigan State University
Affiliation 2: Leiden University
Panel Title: Religion, Literature and Film in South Asia and the South Asian Diaspora
Abstract: Religion, Literature and Film in South Asia and the South Asian Diaspora
Conveners Diana Dimitrova, Michigan State University, Thomas de Bruijn, University of Leiden
We invite papers that discuss the interaction between religion and literature or film in South Asia and the countries of the South Asian Diaspora. The main focus is on the representation of myth in literature and film. The papers should deal with literary texts or films (from the medieval or modern period) that have their origin in the subcontinent or the countries of the South Asian Diaspora. Discussions should be based on methodological analysis of the texts and should consider the ideological implications of the representation of religion. The papers may discuss a single text or film, or compare different texts and films, or compare films with the literary texts they are based on. The papers presented in the panel are likely to be published in an edited volume. Papers read in the panel should therefore be original and not have been published or promised for publication anywhere else. Participation in the panel implies that the participant is willing to submit (a revised version of) his or her paper for publication in such a volume.
Please notice: Paper proposals for the panel can be submitted to the conveners until December 1st. A decision about acceptance of the proposals will be made before December 15th.
Email 1: dimitro7@msu.edu
Email 2: TH.deBruijn@BB.leidenuniv.nl