2nd Annual Centre for South Asian Studies Graduate Symposium

University of Toronto – Asian Institute (Online)
April 21 – April 22, 2022

 

Call for Papers

In and of the Everyday: Thinking with and across South Asia

 

Following a successful first year symposium which featured a range of emerging research of graduate students working in and across South Asian Studies, we invite submissions of papers for this year’s 2022 online symposium broadly framed around the key theme of ‘The Everyday.’ As we complete another year of ongoing, intersecting pandemics, the realities of everyday life are increasingly transformed. We are interested in what different forms the ‘everyday’ has taken and continues to take in relation to and/or in diasporic and continental South Asia. We invite all University of Toronto students from all disciplines and stages in their graduate careers who see their work relating to the study of South Asia (broadly construed and not limited to the continental geography) to participate.

 

The ‘everyday’ calls on us to think about and beyond the mundane and the spectacular, public and private spaces, acts of resistance, hegemonies, and more. How do expressions of the everyday look within material archives, political movements, or domestic spaces? How do people today and in the past conceive of their ‘everyday,’ and how have scholars of South Asia theorized it? Paper proposals can address (but are not limited to) one of the following themes:

 

Everyday speech and voice

Language and translation

Cultural activities and performance

Religious worship (texts, ritual)

Formulations of ‘sacred’

Politics

Mass media

Everyday forms of resistance

Visual representation, art history, everyday cultures

Mundane archives

Security, Political Violence

Dwelling, gathering, communal kinship, gossip

Affective archives, subaltern histories

Alterity

Global feminist theory, Women of Color Feminisms

Infrastructure, place, land, built environment

Other and alternative South Asias

Diasporic Asia, capitalisms, and economies of everyday life

 

Please submit a 250 – 300 word abstract as PDF by February 28, 2022 at 5pm to be considered for the symposium. Include your name, email address, department, and year of study in the heading of your proposal. Within your abstract, please identify 2 – 5 key words or themes your research speaks to. Selected abstracts will be organized into panels on either Thursday April 21 or Friday April 22.

 

If you have any questions, please reach out to the organizers (Atif, Janani, Liwen, or Mirela) at southasiansymposium2022@gmail.com.

——-

Liwen Liu

PhD Candidate

Department for the Study of Religion

University of Toronto