Whilst notions and practices of sovereignty in South Asia have attracted the attention of many a scholar, research has focused almost entirely on the constitution, assertion, legitimation and contestation of state power.
Panels
Below you find the detailed list of accepted panels at our upcoming conference (sorted alphabetically by title).
If you are looking for a specific panel or convenor use the search field below.
12 – South Asian Collections in European Museums: Examining their acquisition, display, and futures
During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a large corpus of objects from South Asia1 entered museums in Europe, enabled by growing European colonialism and imperialism.
13 – The Travelling Female Performer: Mobility and Agency in and beyond South Asia, c. 1760-1940
Female performers in South Asia–devadāsī, mirāsan, tawā’if, kanjrī or naṭnī–have historically been peripatetic communities. This panel explores connections between travel, mobility and power for female performers in South Asia’s broad colonial period (1760-1940), to facilitate a discussion across disciplines like history, ethnomusicology, literature, politics, and art history.
14 – Servitude and Mobility in Pre-Colonial and Colonial South Asia
Occupational mobility is a significant theme to understand various aspects of caste, class, gender, labour, migration etc., in South Asia. Numerous writings on colonial and post-colonial India have examined the fluid nature of caste as people have been involved in occupations beyond their prescribed identities.
15 – Hospitals in South Asia: Historical and Ethnographic Perspectives
Over the past three decades, public health institutions in South Asia have received unprecedented criticism. Public health programs are accused of inaccessibility, long waiting times, poor hygiene and medical malpractice, while private-sector clinics are reproached for profiteering and uneven care practices.
16 – Re-orienting Borderlands:Beyond spatial fixations in South Asia
The study of borderlands in South Asia has highlighted that these societies are not self- contained units contiguously mapped over state territory but include political, economic and cultural networks that often overlap territorial borders.
17 – More Than Human: Animal-Human Relations in Pre-Modern South Asia
Animals, and the non-human world, are a vivid presence in pre-modern life and historical sources. Yet, academic literature on this period has largely remained concerned with human affairs and human agency.
18 – Deviant Bodies, Prohibited Territories and Academia in South Asia
Academic spaces have a tendency to flourish in self contained silos, especially in South Asia where multiple exclusions of gender/caste/language/ethnicity etc operate to prevent access to education.
19 – Beyond “linguistic areas” – Recent advances in the study of language contact in South Asia
Work on South Asia as a “language area” or “Sprachbund” dates back at least to Bloch (1934) but it was not until Emeneau (1956) that it reached a larger linguistic audience. Since then, an extensive literature on this topic has appeared, with different suggestions as to which features should be compared throughout the subcontinent and how to define these.
20 – Self-translation, translating the self: Multilingual writers in South Asia
In the South Asian multilingual context, many writers have lived and worked in between languages. In view of the complex power dynamics between languages, the panel proposes to investigate self-translations and multilingualism under a multiplicity of facets, ranging from language politics and publishing decisions to dialogue with the self in multiple languages.
