[INDOLOGY] Call for Papers: The 23rd SAGSC Conference at the University of Chicago

[tancredi padova]

Dear list members,

As members of the Organizing committee, we are pleased to circulate this call for papers for the 23rd Annual South Asia Graduate Student Conference, to be held at the University of Chicago on March 5th-6th 2026. For all information, please visit the Conference's website https://voices.uchicago.edu/sagsc/ or reach out to us at the address sagsc2026 at gmail.com<mailto:sagsc2026 at gmail.com>.
The organizing committee of the South Asia Graduate Student Conference (SAGSC-XXIII) at the University of Chicago is pleased to announce its twenty-third annual conference: “Resonant Boundaries: (Inter)disciplinarity in and about South Asia.” This year’s conference will take place on March 5th-6th, 2026. We cordially invite papers from independent scholars and graduate students at any stage of study and in any discipline from universities across the world.
This conference seeks to explore the working interfaces and complex intertwinings of different textual canons, systems of knowledge, epistemological approaches and practices, mechanisms of community creation and affiliation, and trajectories of knowledge dissemination in scholarly research pertaining to South Asia. Conference papers may consider how textual genres and canons contribute to larger narratives across self-established formal or disciplinary scopes; inter- and intra-communal knowledge exchange; and how we situate these interfaces within broader histories of intellectual transmission, canon formation, and communicative exchange. In the titular spirit of “resonant boundaries,” papers might surface how interdisciplinary examinations help us to reconceive narratives and attest to hidden histories, draw new connections across doxographically conceived boundaries, and reconceptualize the categories of our disciplinary studies. How do our understandings of our received traditions change as we probe these borders? And which theoretical issues and avenues of inquiry can reconfigurations engender? We welcome consideration of not only the formulation, but also the acquisition and dissemination of disciplinary knowledge and borders. How do cultural and scholarly practices engender theoretical models, historical and sociological processes, and physical, demographic, and sacred geographies proliferating from South Asia? We welcome scholars who engage with both premodern and modern South Asia, whose research extends to surrounding regions, and its place in contemporary global academies. Please join the conversation to strive toward a shared inquiry into the shifting boundaries between genres, disciplines and inherited canons, and all the topics and communities this might meet, to give rise to forms of knowledge and knowing.
Paper topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:

  *   South Asia in global philosophical dialogues: patterns of exchange and adaptation of topics, themes and methods;
  *   Beyond the darśanas: ethical, anthropological, sociological and political philosophies across doxographic boundaries;
  *   Ethics in traditions of renunciation: normative and agential interpretations in the construction of identity and tradition(s) in word and practice;
  *   Intersecting arts and sciences: textualities, literarities, and practices of astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, economics and public policy across South Asia;
  *   Literacy and orality to theorize form and practice in performative arts (including, but not limited to, literature, prosody, music, theatrical and dance forms);
  *   Mutual imbrications of literature and philosophy: translation and (meta)commentary as mediation between the philosophical and the literary mode of thought;
  *   Intertextuality: diatopic transitions of scripts, texts, and editorial practices; modes of translation and (re)interpretation among Sanskrit, vernaculars, Persian, Tibetan, Chinese, and other languages; histories of textual reception, appropriation, censorship, and re-interpretation across authors, traditions and communities;
  *   Diachronic patterns of genre and canon formation: classical, modern, and hybrid forms of literary production;
  *   South Asian Studies inside-out: interdisciplinary approaches to the study of South Asia; toward disciplinary histories of South Asian Studies; whither South Asian studies? Themes and patterns for new avenues of inquiry.

We invite submissions from graduate students and unaffiliated scholars from a wide range of departments, including Anthropology, Archaeology, Area Studies, Art History, Comparative Literature, Film Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, History, Law, Linguistics, Philosophy, Political Science, Religious Studies, and South Asian Studies. Abstracts for individual papers of no more than 500 words should be sent to sagsc2026 at gmail.com <mailto:sagsc2026 at gmail.com> by 11:59pm US CST, December 10th, 2025. Panel proposals will not be considered. Applicants will be notified of a decision in December 2025. Food and lodging will be provided by the University of Chicago. We will assist with travel reimbursement, but we encourage students to firstly and also seek support from their home institutions first so that we can distribute our funds to those most in need. If you have any questions, please write to us at sagsc2026 at gmail.com<mailto:sagsc2026 at gmail.com>.

Best regards,
The Organizing Committe

Alessandro Ganassi, Divinity School
Caitlyn Marentette, Divinity School
Tancredi Padova, South Asian Languages and Civilizations
Alicehank Winham, Divinity School


Tancredi Padova
PhD Student
Division of the Humanities
University of Chicago
✉︎  tpadova at uchicago.edu

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