This week at Tufts University: A conference on South Asian Studies

Friday, September 26: Fletcher ASEAN Auditorium

4:30pm: Is There Anything Special about South Asian Studies?
Amartya Sen, Thomas W. Lamont University Professor, and Professor of Economics and Philosophy, Harvard University

5:30pm: A Sea Change in South Asian Historiography? Reflections on the Last Twenty-Five Years
Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs, Harvard University; Member of the 16th Lok Sabha

Saturday, September 27: Cabot 7th Floor

9:00-10:15am- Panel I: Interventions in South Asian Studies

*From the Bay of Bengal to the Bosphorus: Muslim networks in the age of Empire
Seema Alavi, Delhi University

*Muslim Ethics and Literature in Colonial India: Writing under the Sign of ‘Aklaq
Farina Mir, University of Michigan

*The Suffering Scholar and the Healing Lord: A Materialist Look at a Sacred Center
Brian Hatcher, Tufts University

10:30-11:45am- Panel II: Persisting Concerns in South Asian Studies

Rethinking Religion Reform in Colonial India: Situating the Brahma Samaj in the History of Religion
Neilesh Bose, St. John’s University

“A Wind is Blowing the World Over”: Decolonization and Third World Thought in Bengal
Kris Manjapra, Tufts University

Hysteria in India and the Ways Medicine Moves
Sarah Pinto, Tufts University

1:00-2:15pm - Panel III: South Asia without Borders

The Rule of ‘National’ Difference: A Bengal Perspective
Semanti Ghosh, Anandabazar Patrika

Jupiter, Just a Step Away
S. Akbar Hyder, University of Texas, Austin

Out of India: Political Homelands and Diasporic Identity
Sana Aiyar, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

4:00-5:00pm

Panel IV: Contemporary Challenges facing South Asia

Ayesha Jalal, Director of the Center for South Asian and Indian Ocean Studies, Tufts University
Sugata Bose, Harvard University
Kris Manjapra, Tufts University

“This body is like a musical instrument; what you hear depends upon how you play it.” – Anandamayi Ma

“Inside every human being there exists a special heaven, whole and unbroken.” - Paracelsus