The 49th Spalding Symposium on Indian Religions, 19–21 April 2024
Venue: Council Chamber, Main Building, Cardiff University
Theme:
Pilgrimage in South Asia
Registration fee for delegates: £60 full fee / £30 concessionary fee
For booking details, please contact Simon Brodbeck
(brodbecksp@cardiff.ac.uk)
Provisional schedule:
Friday 19 April
1.50 welcome
2.00
Keynote: Max Deeg (Cardiff University): ‘Dharmayātrā:
from Regional Religious Traveling to Trans-Asian Pilgrimage’
3.00
Daniela Bevilacqua (ISCTE - University Institute of
Lisbon): ‘Tapobhūmi: when the Spiritual Power Saturates the Landscape’
4.00 tea
4.30
Justin Grosnick (University of California at Berkeley): ‘Jagannath the Pilgrim: Pilgrimage as Envisioned from the Perspective of Sacred Images’
5.00
Elizabeth A. Cecil (Florida State University): ‘Crossing Over:
Tīrtha in Early Southeast Asia’
Saturday 20 April
9.00
Keynote: Catherine Hartmann (University of Wyoming): ‘Reading
Milarepa in his Footsteps: how a Tibetan Pilgrim Engages the Life of Milarepa’
10.00 Dessi Vendova (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston): ‘Revisiting the
Kāliṅgabodhi Jātaka’s Classification of Buddhist Shrines’
11.00 coffee
11.30
Shaashi Ahlawat (University of Pennsylvania): ‘Migrants to Pilgrims: Jains in Medieval Magadha’
12.00
Mrinalini Sil (Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi): ‘Imaging Sacred Spaces, Transregional Travels and Religio-Aesthetics of Jain Mercantile Mobility in
Early Modern Bengal’
12.30 Umtul Aleem Kokab (Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi): ‘Pilgrimage of the ‘Heretics’: an Ethnographic Study of
Jalsa Salana, an Annual Gathering of Ahmadi Pilgrims in Qadian, India’
1.00 lunch
2.00
Michael D. Calabria (St. Bonaventure University, New York): ‘The Path of the Penitent: the Pilgrimage to Ajmer under Shah Jahan’
3.00
Parshati Dutta (University of York): ‘“All the Way to that Blessed and Gracious Place, the Corner of Security”: a Mughal Princess’s Pilgrimage and Matronage
in the Sufi Shrine of Ajmer’
3.30
Imran Visram (Oxford University): ‘Pilgrimage in the Didactic Teachings of the Satpanth Ismaili Pirs’
4.00 tea
4.30
Tomoka Mushiga (University of Osaka): ‘The Development of a Hindu Sacred Site: Change from Śaiva to Vaiṣṇava Affiliation in Gayā’
5.30
Rutika Gandhi (University of British Columbia): ‘Digital
Darshan: Reimagining Pilgrimage and Divine Connection in the Age of Social Media – A Case Study of Harsiddhi Mata Temple’
Sunday 21 April
9.00
Aneesh Raghavan (Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities):
‘Textual vs Tangible: Temples in the Kāñcīsthalamāhātmya’
10.00
Peter C. Bisschop (Leiden University): ‘The Moving and the Immovable: the Pilgrimage Landscape of Kālañjara’
11.00 coffee
11.30
Sowparnika Balaswaminathan (Concordia University): ‘Swamimalai Stories: Contemporary Place-Making in a Pilgrimage Town’
12.30
Jim Mallinson (Oxford University): ‘Pilgrimage on the Margins: Hinglaj and Dhinodhar’
1.30 lunch