We are a group of UCI graduate students across disciplines (and departments) working in/on/around/about “South Asia.” Our interests range from postcolonial studies to history to literary theory to performance to political economy to ethnography to various other avenues circling around “South Asia” and, sometimes, beyond. Centrally we also seek to deliberate on questions related to:
What is South Asia? What does the category ‘South Asia’ invoke in scholarship based within the Euro-American academy? What unifies, if at all, the disparate work that might fall under the category of South-Asian Studies? Seeing as the term enables different conceptual paradigms for different scholars in different disciplines, the aim of the first graduate conference on South Asia will explore this contested terrain that is South-Asian Studies.
In 2017, we received funding from the UCI Dean of Social Sciences to organise our regular reading group meetings throughout the year which enabled us to organise a series of events in the Spring quarter. The events included a film screening of the movie Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi, a mini-seminar and lecture by Professor Anjali Arondekar and the lecture by Professor R. Radhakrishnan on the future of South Asian studies. Following Professor Radhakrishnan’s provocations, we are planning to organise a graduate conference on South Asia tentatively in Fall’2019.
To join our mailing list/ would like to workshop your paper, please send an email to pmahapat@uci.edu.
Update: A new Blog section is up. Check it now!