Thursday, September 12, 2013
A talk by Sunil Kothari
Sattriya: Dances of Assam
Moderated by Vidya Dehejia (Department of Art History and Archeaology)
Organized with the Barnard College Dance Department
Sunil Kothari is a dance historian, scholar, author and critic of Indian classical dances. He was formerly Uday Shankar Professor and Chair, Dance Department, Rabindra Baharti University; and Dean and Professor, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawharlal Nehru University. He has been awarded the Padma Shri, and the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for overall contribution to the field of dance. Kothari had Fulbright Fellowships for residencies at the University of Georgia, Athens and at Evergreen State College, and was a Visiting Professor at NYU. He is the author of twelve books including the upcoming monograph Sattriya: Dances of Assam.
Time: 6:00pm - 7:30pm
Location: Knox Hall, Room 207, 606 West 122nd Street, between Broadway and Claremont
Monday, September 16, 2013
A Conversation with Nalini Malani and Andreas Huyssen
In Search of Vanished Blood
Introduction by Vishakha Desai (School of International and Public Affairs)
Nalini Malani's artistic practice spans drawing and painting, and the extension of those forms into projected animation, video, sound, and film. Born in Karachi, she lives and works in Bombay. In 2013, Malani was honored with the prestigious Fukuoka Prize for Arts and Culture. She is represented in numerous public collections around the world, including the Asia Society Museum, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York, National Gallery of Modern Art, Bombay; National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi; British Museum, London; and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and in Australia, Cuba, Hong Kong, and Japan.
Nalini Malani's video/shadow play, "In Search of Vanished Blood," will premier in New York on September 6, 2013 at the Gallery Lelong. "In Search of Vanished Blood" takes its title from the 1965 Urdu poem "Lahu Ka Surag" and is inspired by the 1984 novel Cassandra by Christa Wolf and the 1910 book The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke.
Andreas Huyssen is the Villard Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Columbia, where he served as founding director of the Center for Comparative Literature and Society. He chaired the Department of Germanic Languages from 1986-1992 and again from 2005-2008. His research and teaching focus on 18th-20th-century German literature and culture, international modernism, Frankfurt School critical theory, postmodernism, cultural memory of historical trauma in transnational contexts, and, most recently, urban culture and globalization.
Time: 4:00pm - 5:30pm
Location: Knox Hall, Room 208, 606 West 122nd Street, between Broadway and Claremont
In Search of Vanished Blood
Introduction by Vishakha Desai (School of International and Public Affairs)
Nalini Malani's artistic practice spans drawing and painting, and the extension of those forms into projected animation, video, sound, and film. Born in Karachi, she lives and works in Bombay. In 2013, Malani was honored with the prestigious Fukuoka Prize for Arts and Culture. She is represented in numerous public collections around the world, including the Asia Society Museum, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York, National Gallery of Modern Art, Bombay; National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi; British Museum, London; and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and in Australia, Cuba, Hong Kong, and Japan.
Nalini Malani's video/shadow play, "In Search of Vanished Blood," will premier in New York on September 6, 2013 at the Gallery Lelong. "In Search of Vanished Blood" takes its title from the 1965 Urdu poem "Lahu Ka Surag" and is inspired by the 1984 novel Cassandra by Christa Wolf and the 1910 book The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke.
Andreas Huyssen is the Villard Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Columbia, where he served as founding director of the Center for Comparative Literature and Society. He chaired the Department of Germanic Languages from 1986-1992 and again from 2005-2008. His research and teaching focus on 18th-20th-century German literature and culture, international modernism, Frankfurt School critical theory, postmodernism, cultural memory of historical trauma in transnational contexts, and, most recently, urban culture and globalization.
Time: 4:00pm - 5:30pm
Location: Knox Hall, Room 208, 606 West 122nd Street, between Broadway and Claremont
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
The Global Landscape of Mira Nair
A conversation with Mira Nair
(Salaam Bombay, Monsoon Wedding, The Reluctant Fundamentalist)
Moderated by Lila Abu-Lughod, Director, Center for the Study of Social Difference, with Anupama Rao (Barnard Department of History), and Mabel Wilson (Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation),
Organized by Women Creating Change, the Center for the Study of Social Difference
Co-sponsored by the School of the Arts, the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, and the Middle East and South Asia Institutes.
Time: 6:30pm - 8:00pm
Location: Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall
For a campus map including Avery Hall, visit http://www.columbia.edu/content/maps.html.
A conversation with Mira Nair
(Salaam Bombay, Monsoon Wedding, The Reluctant Fundamentalist)
Moderated by Lila Abu-Lughod, Director, Center for the Study of Social Difference, with Anupama Rao (Barnard Department of History), and Mabel Wilson (Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation),
Organized by Women Creating Change, the Center for the Study of Social Difference
Co-sponsored by the School of the Arts, the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, and the Middle East and South Asia Institutes.
Time: 6:30pm - 8:00pm
Location: Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall
For a campus map including Avery Hall, visit http://www.columbia.edu/content/maps.html.
Monday, September 23, 2013
A talk by Amit Chaudhuri
Calcutta: Two Years in the City
Moderated by Partha Chatterjee (Departments of Anthropology and MESAAS)
Amit Chaudhuri is Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of East Anglia. He earned his PhD at Oxford University, and was Leverhulme Special Research Fellow at the Faculty of English, Cambridge, and has been Visiting Professor at Columbia and the Freie University, Berlin. He is the author of five novels, including The Immortals (2009), and On Tagore: Reading the Poet Today (2012). His latest book, Calcutta: Two Years in the City will be published in Fall 2013. Among the awards he has won for his fiction are the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Betty Trask Prize, the Encore Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, and the Government of India's Sahitya Akademi Award. He writes regularly for the London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, and the Guardian.
Time: 4:00pm - 5:30pm
Location: Knox Hall, Room 208, 606 West 122nd Street, between Broadway and Claremont
Calcutta: Two Years in the City
Moderated by Partha Chatterjee (Departments of Anthropology and MESAAS)
Amit Chaudhuri is Professor of Contemporary Literature at the University of East Anglia. He earned his PhD at Oxford University, and was Leverhulme Special Research Fellow at the Faculty of English, Cambridge, and has been Visiting Professor at Columbia and the Freie University, Berlin. He is the author of five novels, including The Immortals (2009), and On Tagore: Reading the Poet Today (2012). His latest book, Calcutta: Two Years in the City will be published in Fall 2013. Among the awards he has won for his fiction are the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Betty Trask Prize, the Encore Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, and the Government of India's Sahitya Akademi Award. He writes regularly for the London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, and the Guardian.
Time: 4:00pm - 5:30pm
Location: Knox Hall, Room 208, 606 West 122nd Street, between Broadway and Claremont
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
A panel discussion:
At 110th & Lenox: The Intersection of Hate, Faith, and Community
"At 110th & Lenox," is a panel convened to discuss the aftermath of the hateful attack on Columbia Professor and Community Health Provider Dr. Prabhjot Singh. On Sept. 21, he was attacked by a group of young men who assailed him after yelling "get Osama" and "terrorist." The assailants went on to attack a Somali Muslim woman wearing hijab. Both victims were treated at Mount Sinai Hospital and released.
We hope the occasion will act as a springboard for discussion between student and faculty communities of Columbia University, activists and workers, and community leaders, in order to foster growth and strengthen relationships in the wake of the attack. Speakers and discussants will include activist Sonny Singh, Iman Konaté (Islamic Cultural Center of New York), Professor Manan Ahmed (History Department), and others.
Time: 7:00pm - 8:30pm
Location: Altschul Auditorium, International Affairs Building, 118th Street and Amsterdam Avenue
At 110th & Lenox: The Intersection of Hate, Faith, and Community
"At 110th & Lenox," is a panel convened to discuss the aftermath of the hateful attack on Columbia Professor and Community Health Provider Dr. Prabhjot Singh. On Sept. 21, he was attacked by a group of young men who assailed him after yelling "get Osama" and "terrorist." The assailants went on to attack a Somali Muslim woman wearing hijab. Both victims were treated at Mount Sinai Hospital and released.
We hope the occasion will act as a springboard for discussion between student and faculty communities of Columbia University, activists and workers, and community leaders, in order to foster growth and strengthen relationships in the wake of the attack. Speakers and discussants will include activist Sonny Singh, Iman Konaté (Islamic Cultural Center of New York), Professor Manan Ahmed (History Department), and others.
Time: 7:00pm - 8:30pm
Location: Altschul Auditorium, International Affairs Building, 118th Street and Amsterdam Avenue
Monday, October 21, 2013
Kangal Malsat
(War Cry of the Beggars, 2013)
in Bengali with English subtitles
A film screening and discussion with director Suman Mukhopadhyay
Moderated by Partha Chatterjee (Departments of Anthropology and MESAAS)
Co-sponsored by Barnard College and the Film Program, School of the Arts
In the derelict shanties and dark alleys of Calcutta live two warring groups of the nether world. The Fyataroos have the gift of flying and the Choktars practice black magic. Suddenly, the rival groups are joined together in alliance by an ageless duo - a primordial talking crow and Begum Johnson who consorted with Job Charnock and Warren Hastings. Masterminded by the two ancient progenitors of the city and led by the magically endowed rebels, an army of tramps and vagrants launch an uprising against the Communist government of West Bengal. As skulls dance in crematoria, flying discs whizz through the sky, and a portrait of Stalin angrily admonishes the Chief Minister, the Communist government falls. The political transition, however, sees many of the rebels being rewarded with awards and positions in the new government. This unrelenting and bitterly sarcastic political film, based on a novel by Nabarun Bhattacharya, landed director Suman Mukhopadhyay in some trouble with the censors.
Suman Mukhopadhyay is an Indian filmmaker and theatre director. His debut film Herbert was awarded the Silver Lotus, the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Bengali in 2006. Chaturanga (2008), his second film, was based on the Tagore novel and screened at many national and international festivals, and honored with awards in Sarajevo, Philadelphia, and Mexico. His most recent film, Kangal Malsat is based on the novel with same title written by Nabarun Bhattacharya and was released in India in August 2013.
Time: 6:00pm - 8:30pm
Location: Held Auditorium, 204 Barnard Hall, Barnard College, entrance at 118th and Broadway For a campus map including Barnard College, visit http://www.columbia.edu/content/maps.html.
(War Cry of the Beggars, 2013)
in Bengali with English subtitles
A film screening and discussion with director Suman Mukhopadhyay
Moderated by Partha Chatterjee (Departments of Anthropology and MESAAS)
Co-sponsored by Barnard College and the Film Program, School of the Arts
In the derelict shanties and dark alleys of Calcutta live two warring groups of the nether world. The Fyataroos have the gift of flying and the Choktars practice black magic. Suddenly, the rival groups are joined together in alliance by an ageless duo - a primordial talking crow and Begum Johnson who consorted with Job Charnock and Warren Hastings. Masterminded by the two ancient progenitors of the city and led by the magically endowed rebels, an army of tramps and vagrants launch an uprising against the Communist government of West Bengal. As skulls dance in crematoria, flying discs whizz through the sky, and a portrait of Stalin angrily admonishes the Chief Minister, the Communist government falls. The political transition, however, sees many of the rebels being rewarded with awards and positions in the new government. This unrelenting and bitterly sarcastic political film, based on a novel by Nabarun Bhattacharya, landed director Suman Mukhopadhyay in some trouble with the censors.
Suman Mukhopadhyay is an Indian filmmaker and theatre director. His debut film Herbert was awarded the Silver Lotus, the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Bengali in 2006. Chaturanga (2008), his second film, was based on the Tagore novel and screened at many national and international festivals, and honored with awards in Sarajevo, Philadelphia, and Mexico. His most recent film, Kangal Malsat is based on the novel with same title written by Nabarun Bhattacharya and was released in India in August 2013.
Time: 6:00pm - 8:30pm
Location: Held Auditorium, 204 Barnard Hall, Barnard College, entrance at 118th and Broadway For a campus map including Barnard College, visit http://www.columbia.edu/content/maps.html.
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
The Sidney Morgenbesser Chair Inaugural Lecture
A talk by Akeel Bilgrami
Gandhi (and Marx)
Organized by the Department of Philosophy
Akeel Bilgrami is Sidney Morgenbesser Professor of Philosophy; Director, South Asia Institute, and a faculty member of the Committee on Global Thought. He was educated at Bombay and Oxford Universities, the latter as a Rhodes Scholar, and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He joined Columbia after spending two years at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Professor Bilgrami was Chairman of the Philosophy Department from 1994-98 and the Director of the Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University from 2004-2011. He has been a visiting professor at Oxford, Yale, and Jawaharlal Nehru Universities, and the Universities of Hyderabad and Witwatersrand. His most recent publications include Self Knowledge and Resentment (2006) and the upcoming Secularism, Identity, and Enchantment (February 2014).
The Sidney Morgenbesser Professorship of Philosophy was established by Roger Alcaly and Helen Bodian to recognize a distinguished full professor in the Department of Philosophy who embodies the qualities of Sidney Morgenbesser, a devoted philosophy teacher at Columbia who enthusiastically embraced the instruction of undergraduates as well as graduate students. The professorship is designed to recognize a professor who not only is known for distinguished work in the discipline but also shares Professor Morgenbesser's broad scholarly interests in the humanities and social sciences, and his conviction that philosophy, more than a purely academic pursuit, should be a means of addressing the moral, social and political issues of the day.
Time: November 12, 6.15 pm
Location: Casa Italiana, 1161 Amsterdam Avenue, between 116th and 118th Streets.
For a campus map including Casa Italiana, visit http://www.columbia.edu/content/maps.html.
A talk by Akeel Bilgrami
Gandhi (and Marx)
Organized by the Department of Philosophy
Akeel Bilgrami is Sidney Morgenbesser Professor of Philosophy; Director, South Asia Institute, and a faculty member of the Committee on Global Thought. He was educated at Bombay and Oxford Universities, the latter as a Rhodes Scholar, and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He joined Columbia after spending two years at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Professor Bilgrami was Chairman of the Philosophy Department from 1994-98 and the Director of the Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University from 2004-2011. He has been a visiting professor at Oxford, Yale, and Jawaharlal Nehru Universities, and the Universities of Hyderabad and Witwatersrand. His most recent publications include Self Knowledge and Resentment (2006) and the upcoming Secularism, Identity, and Enchantment (February 2014).
The Sidney Morgenbesser Professorship of Philosophy was established by Roger Alcaly and Helen Bodian to recognize a distinguished full professor in the Department of Philosophy who embodies the qualities of Sidney Morgenbesser, a devoted philosophy teacher at Columbia who enthusiastically embraced the instruction of undergraduates as well as graduate students. The professorship is designed to recognize a professor who not only is known for distinguished work in the discipline but also shares Professor Morgenbesser's broad scholarly interests in the humanities and social sciences, and his conviction that philosophy, more than a purely academic pursuit, should be a means of addressing the moral, social and political issues of the day.
Time: November 12, 6.15 pm
Location: Casa Italiana, 1161 Amsterdam Avenue, between 116th and 118th Streets.
For a campus map including Casa Italiana, visit http://www.columbia.edu/content/maps.html.
Monday, November 18, 2013
A talk by S. Akbar Zaidi
Pakistan's New Political Economy? Class, State, Power and Transition
S. Akbar Zaidi is Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies and the School of International and Public Affairs. He earned his PhD at Cambridge, has taught at the University of Karachi, and was a Visiting Professor at the Johns Hopkins University. He is a regular contributor to Economic and Political Weekly, and is the author of twelve books, including Military, Civil Society and Democratization in Pakistan (2011); The Political Economy of Decentralisation in Pakistan (2005); and Pakistan's Economic and Social Development: The Domestic, Regional and Global Context (2004).
Time: 4:00pm - 5:30pm
Location: Knox Hall, Room 208, 606 West 122nd Street, between Broadway and Claremont
Pakistan's New Political Economy? Class, State, Power and Transition
S. Akbar Zaidi is Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies and the School of International and Public Affairs. He earned his PhD at Cambridge, has taught at the University of Karachi, and was a Visiting Professor at the Johns Hopkins University. He is a regular contributor to Economic and Political Weekly, and is the author of twelve books, including Military, Civil Society and Democratization in Pakistan (2011); The Political Economy of Decentralisation in Pakistan (2005); and Pakistan's Economic and Social Development: The Domestic, Regional and Global Context (2004).
Time: 4:00pm - 5:30pm
Location: Knox Hall, Room 208, 606 West 122nd Street, between Broadway and Claremont
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
Growth and Poverty
a panel discussion with
Edmund S. Phelps, Jeffrey D. Sachs, and Amartya Sen
Moderated by President Lee C. Bollinger
Co-sponsored with the Office of the President, the World Leaders Forum, and the Committee on Global Thought
Registration for the event has closed. The event will be live streamed from the World Leaders Forum website. A link will be provided on the day of the event at http://www.worldleaders.columbia.edu/events/growth-and-poverty.
Edmund S. Phelps is McVickar Professor of Political Economy at Columbia University, and Director of Columbia's Center on Capitalism and Society. He earned a B.A. from Amherst and a Ph.D. from Yale. His career began at the RAND Corporation, and then at positions at Yale and the University of Pennsylvania, before joining Columbia in 1971. In 2006, he was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize in Economics. Phelps holds many honorary doctorates and professorships, including from the Université libre de Bruxelles (2010), Tsinghua University (2007) and the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (2006). In 2008, he was named Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur and awarded the Premio Pico della Mirandola and the Kiel Global Economy Prize. The same year the UBA Law School established the Catedra Phelps and the Phelps Medal for Innovation. In 2010, he was appointed Dean of New Huadu Business School at Minjiang University in Fuzhou. In 2011, Professor Phelps received the Louise Blouin Creative Leadership Award and was named a Full Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He was elected an Honorary Patron of the University Philosophical Society of Trinity College and was awarded the Mendeleev Medal for Achievement in the Sciences in 2012.
Jeffrey D. Sachs is the Director of The Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University. He is Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the Millennium Development Goals, and Director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He is co-founder and Chief Strategist of Millennium Promise Alliance, and is director of the Millennium Villages Project. He has authored three New York Times bestsellers in the past seven years: The End of Poverty (2005), Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet (2008), and The Price of Civilization (2011).
Amartya Sen is Thomas W. Lamont University Professor, and Professor of Economics and Philosophy, at Harvard University. He was until 2004 the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Sen earlier held appointments at Jadavpur University Calcutta, the Delhi School of Economics, the London School of Economics, and Oxford University. His research has ranged over social choice theory, economic theory, ethics and political philosophy, welfare economics, theory of measurement, decision theory, development economics, public health, and gender studies. Among the awards he has received are the "Bharat Ratn," awarded by the President of India); the Agnelli International Prize in Ethics; the Edinburgh Medal; the Brazilian Ordem do Merito Cientifico; the Eisenhower Medal; the Legion of Honour (France); Honorary Companion of Honour (UK); the George C. Marshall Award (US); the National Humanities Medal (US); and the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Time: 8:00pm
Location: Rotunda, Low Library
For a campus map including Low Library, please visit http://www.columbia.edu/content/maps.html.
a panel discussion with
Edmund S. Phelps, Jeffrey D. Sachs, and Amartya Sen
Moderated by President Lee C. Bollinger
Co-sponsored with the Office of the President, the World Leaders Forum, and the Committee on Global Thought
Registration for the event has closed. The event will be live streamed from the World Leaders Forum website. A link will be provided on the day of the event at http://www.worldleaders.columbia.edu/events/growth-and-poverty.
Edmund S. Phelps is McVickar Professor of Political Economy at Columbia University, and Director of Columbia's Center on Capitalism and Society. He earned a B.A. from Amherst and a Ph.D. from Yale. His career began at the RAND Corporation, and then at positions at Yale and the University of Pennsylvania, before joining Columbia in 1971. In 2006, he was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize in Economics. Phelps holds many honorary doctorates and professorships, including from the Université libre de Bruxelles (2010), Tsinghua University (2007) and the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (2006). In 2008, he was named Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur and awarded the Premio Pico della Mirandola and the Kiel Global Economy Prize. The same year the UBA Law School established the Catedra Phelps and the Phelps Medal for Innovation. In 2010, he was appointed Dean of New Huadu Business School at Minjiang University in Fuzhou. In 2011, Professor Phelps received the Louise Blouin Creative Leadership Award and was named a Full Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He was elected an Honorary Patron of the University Philosophical Society of Trinity College and was awarded the Mendeleev Medal for Achievement in the Sciences in 2012.
Jeffrey D. Sachs is the Director of The Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University. He is Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the Millennium Development Goals, and Director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He is co-founder and Chief Strategist of Millennium Promise Alliance, and is director of the Millennium Villages Project. He has authored three New York Times bestsellers in the past seven years: The End of Poverty (2005), Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet (2008), and The Price of Civilization (2011).
Amartya Sen is Thomas W. Lamont University Professor, and Professor of Economics and Philosophy, at Harvard University. He was until 2004 the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Sen earlier held appointments at Jadavpur University Calcutta, the Delhi School of Economics, the London School of Economics, and Oxford University. His research has ranged over social choice theory, economic theory, ethics and political philosophy, welfare economics, theory of measurement, decision theory, development economics, public health, and gender studies. Among the awards he has received are the "Bharat Ratn," awarded by the President of India); the Agnelli International Prize in Ethics; the Edinburgh Medal; the Brazilian Ordem do Merito Cientifico; the Eisenhower Medal; the Legion of Honour (France); Honorary Companion of Honour (UK); the George C. Marshall Award (US); the National Humanities Medal (US); and the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Time: 8:00pm
Location: Rotunda, Low Library
For a campus map including Low Library, please visit http://www.columbia.edu/content/maps.html.
Monday, February 10, 2014
A talk by David Ludden
Globalization as Regime Change: Imperial India in Global Asia
Time: 6:00pm - 7:30pm
Location: Room 208, Knox Hall, 606 West 122nd Street, between Broadway and Claremont
At New York University, David Ludden is Professor of Political Economy and Globalization, Chair of the Department of History and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Public Knowledge. He received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Pennsylvania, where he served on the faculty from 1981 until 2007. He was chair of South Asia programs at Penn, at the Social Science Research Council, and at the Fulbright Senior Scholars program (CIES). In 2002, he served as President of the Association for Asian Studies. His research concerns histories of development and globalization, southern India, Bangladesh and northeast India. His publications include four edited volumes, three monographs, and over 50 academic articles and chapters, whose overarching theme is the comparative history of capitalism, particularly in agrarian settings and as it concerns inequality, poverty, conflict, and social movements.
Monday, February 24, 2014
A talk by Prabhat Patnaik
The Parliament and Political Economy in India
Time: 4:00pm - 5:30pm
Location: Room 208, Knox Hall, 606 West 122nd Street, between Broadway and Claremont
Prabhat Patnaik held the Sukhamoy Chakravarty Chair of Planning and Development at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning (CESP) in the School of Social Sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University at the time of his retirement in 2010. He earned his D. Phil. at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar and taught at the University of Cambridge before joining CESP. He served as Vice-Chairman of the Planning Board of Kerala from 2006-2011. His research interests include the limits of neoliberal economic policies, Marxist economics, and theory of the value of money. His publications include Retreat to Unfreedom: Essays on the Emerging World Order (2003); The Value of Money (2008) and Re-Envisioning Socialism (2011). He is the editor of Social Scientist, the journal of the Indian School of Social Sciences, New Delhi.
Friday, February 28, 2014
Shujaat Khan (sitar)
and Samir Chatterjee (tabla)
in Concert at the Miller Theatre at Columbia University
Time: 8:00pm - 10:30pm
Location: Miller Theatre, 2960 Broadway (at 116th Street)
For a campus map including the Miller Theatre, please visit http://www.columbia.edu/content/maps.html.
Tickets are $30, $25, or $15 with a valid student ID.
For online ticket purchase, visit Tickets.com. Search on "Khan and Chatterjee." Select the orange icon "View Seat Map" icon. Click through two screens to the colored map to select your choice of seat(s).
Tickets may be purchased in person at the Miller Theatre Box Office or by Phone at 212-854-7799.
Shujaat Husain Khan is one of the leading North Indian classical musicians of his generation. He belongs to the Imdadkhani Gharana (tradition) of the sitar and his style of playing sitar, known as the gayaki ang, is imitative of the subtleties of the human voice. Khan has performed at music festivals in India and throughout Asia, Africa, North America, and Europe. He has headlined at concert halls such as the Royal Albert Hall in London, Royce Hall in Los Angeles, and Congress Hall in Berlin. In 2007, he was the featured artist at musical concerts celebrating India's 50th anniversary of independence at Carnegie Hall in New York, and at celebrations in Seattle and Dallas. Khan was the sole artist representing India in a special performance at the United Nations General Assembly Hall in Geneva commemorating India's independence the same year. Shujaat Khan has been affiliated as a visiting faculty at the Dartington School of Music in England, the University of Washington in Seattle, and the University of California, Los Angeles.
Samir Chatterjee is a virtuoso Tabla player from the Farrukhabad Gharana (school). He has traveled widely across the world to perform at festivals as a soloist or with other outstanding musicians from Indian and western musical traditions. In concert Samir has accompanied many of India's most celebrated musicians and has played with jazz, classical, and experimental musicians and ensembles around the world. Chatterjee performed at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo, Norway in 2007 and has performed several times at the United Nations General Assembly. Chatterjee has been teaching for 35 years and is the Founder-Director of Chhandayan, an organization dedicated to promoting and preserving Indian music and culture. He has taught at Yale University, Manhattan School of Music, the New School, and the Universities of Pittsburgh and Bridgeport.
Monday, March 3, 2014
A discussion with Prabhat Patnaik and S. Akbar Zaidi
South Asian Political Economy:
A Historical and Contemporary Analysis of India and Pakistan
Time: 4:00pm - 5:30pm
Location: Room 208, Knox Hall, 606 West 122nd Street, between Broadway and Claremont
Prabhat Patnaik held the Sukhamoy Chakravarty Chair of Planning and Development at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning (CESP) in the School of Social Sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University at the time of his retirement in 2010. He earned his D. Phil. at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar and taught at the University of Cambridge before joining CESP. He served as Vice-Chairman of the Planning Board of Kerala from 2006-2011. His research interests include the limits of neoliberal economic policies, Marxist economics, and theory of the value of money. His publications include Retreat to Unfreedom: Essays on the Emerging World Order (2003); The Value of Money (2008) and Re-Envisioning Socialism (2011). He is the editor of Social Scientist, the journal of the Indian School of Social Sciences, New Delhi.
S. Akbar Zaidi is Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies and the School of Public and International Affairs.
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Teaching Pakistani History/Teaching Pakistanis History
Featuring: Manan Ahmed, Sana Haroon, Tahir Kamran, and Vazira Fazila-Yacoobian Zamindar
Moderated by S. Akbar Zaidi
Time: 6:00pm - 8:00pm
Location: Room 208, Knox Hall, 606 West 122nd Street, between Broadway and Claremont
Pakistani history has been a contentious topic, especially in Pakistan, where different sets of narratives give differing accounts of what Pakistani history is, and hence, how one imagines Pakistan. Given the eventual partition of British India into two states, some historians have claimed that Pakistan was `created´ in 712 AD when an Arab invader came to an area which is now part of Pakistan. This event is incorrectly seen as the first Muslim contact with what is now called South Asia, yet it supports one of the many official narratives of when Muslim "consciousness" and identity were created in this region.
Other competing narratives still in the official domain, look to the Delhi Sultanate, or the Mughal Empire, or events in the nineteenth century and 1857, crystallising into a separate Muslim identity, which inevitably led to the creation of Pakistan. The question, when was Pakistan "created," is one which simply works around a Muslims-are-different-from-Hindus discourse, culminating in a separate homeland. As a consequence, "Pakistani" history then ignores the history of the people who live in what was Pakistan prior to 1971 and what it is today. Mohenjo-Daro, Harappa, and the history of the people of Pakistan is dominated by a north Indian (largely Hindustani) Muslim history, and that too, only of kings and their courts. Once politics began to dominate undivided India in the twentieth century, the Pakistan "freedom movement" of course - and not the movement for independence from British colonialism for all Indian peoples - shaped this discourse more teleologically.
The problems of teaching history to Pakistanis by trained historians in Pakistan has given rise to a different set of issues. While some academics claim that the state of social sciences in Pakistan has been dismal, the state of History in Pakistan has been particularly so. Interestingly, some decades ago, some Pakistani historians were highly respected scholars doing archival research, but today, the absence of professional historians, with little research being done, and hence few conferences or seminars or academic journals, exacerbates the problem, with non-historians now teaching History. Moreover, since the propaganda of the Pakistan "ideology" and the "freedom movement" constitute what pass for History in/of Pakistan, teaching history is not considered a priority.
Manan Ahmed is Assistant Professor in the History Department. Sana Haroon is Assistant Professor in History and Asian Studies, University of Massachusetts, Boston. She received her BA at Yale and PhD at SOAS, London, and is the author of Frontier of Faith: Islam in the Indo-Afghan Borderland (2007). Columbia alumna Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar is Associate Professor of History at Brown University, and is the author of The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, Histories, (2007). Tahir Kamran is the Allama Iqbal Fellow at the Centre of South Asian Studies at the University of Cambridge. He is the former head of the department of history at Government College University in Lahore. Kramran is the author of Democracy and Governance in Pakistan (2008). S. Akbar Zaidi is Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies and the School of Public and International Affairs.
Monday, April 7, 2014
A talk by Rana Dasgupta
Delhi, or, The turbulent unconscious of the emerging-world metropolis
Time: 4:00pm - 5:30pm
Location: Room 208, Knox Hall, 606 West 122nd Street, between Broadway and Claremont
Rana Dasgupta was born in England and educated at Oxford University, the Conservatoire Darius Milhaud (Aix-en-Provence), and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2001, he moved to Delhi, where he now lives. In 2012, Dasgupta was Whitney J. Oates Visiting Fellow in the Humanities at Princeton University. During Spring 2014, DasGupta will be at Brown University as Distinguished Visiting Lecturer and Writer-in-Residence in the Department of Modern Culture and Media.
His first book of stories, Tokyo Cancelled (2005) was short-listed for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize (UK) and the Vodafone Crossword Award (India). Dasgupta’s novel, Solo (2009), has been translated into 20 languages and was awarded the 2010 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize. His newest book, Capital: A Portrait of Twenty-First-Century Delhi (2014), is a “non-fiction exploration of his adopted city of Delhi, and, in particular, the changes and personalities brought about there by globalization.”
Monday, April 7, 2014
A discussion with Gopal Guru and Sundar Sarrukai
Caste and Sociality
Time: 6:30pm - 8:00pm
Location: Room 208, Knox Hall, 606 West 122nd Street, between Broadway and Claremont
Gopal Guru is a Professor at the Center of Political Science, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and the author of Humilation: Claims and Context (2009). Sundar Sarrukai is Professor and Director at the Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities, Manipal University. His publications include Translating the World: Science and Language (2002), and Indian Philosophy and Philosophy of Science (2005). Guru and Sarrukai co-authored The Cracked Mirror: An Indian Debate on Experience and Theory (2012).
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
The University Seminar on South Asia and the South Asia Institute present
A talk by Romila Thapar
Historical Traditions of Early North India
Time: 4:00pm - 5:30pm
Location: Faculty House, Morningside Campus (View PDF of Directions or Map of Morningside Campus)
Romila Thapar earned her first degree from Punjab University and her doctorate from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University. She was appointed to a Readership at Delhi University and subsequently to the Chair in Ancient Indian History at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, where she is now Emeritus Professor in History. Thapar has been a Visiting Professor at Cornell, Dartmouth, and Pennsylvania. In 1983, she was elected General President of the Indian History Congress and in 1999 a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. Her many publications include Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas (Third edition, 2012); Ancient Indian Social History (Second Edition, 2006); From Lineage to State: Social Formations of the Mid-First Millennium B.C. in the Ganges Valley (Second Edition, 1993).
Monday, April 14, 2014
Annual Mary Keatinge Das Lecture
A talk by Muzaffar Alam
Maulana Azad and the Memory of India's Islamic Past
Time: 4:00pm - 5:30pm
Location:Room 208, Knox Hall, 606 West 122nd Street, between Broadway and Claremont
Muzaffar Alam is George V. Bobrinskoy Professor in South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. An historian trained at Jamia Millia Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University, he earned his PhD at Jawaharlal Nehru University in history in 1977. Before joining the University of Chicago, he taught for three decades at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Alam has held visiting positions in the Collège de France (Paris), Leiden University, University of Wisconsin (Madison), and the EHESS (Paris). His recent publications include The Languages of Political Islam in India: c. 1200-1800 (2004); Indo-Persian Travels in the Age of Discovery: 1400-1800 (2010, with Sanjay Subrahmanyam); and Writing the Mughal World: Studies on Culture and Politics (2011, also with Subrahmanyam).
Monday, April 28, 2014
A talk by Gyanendra Pandey
A History of Prejudice: Race, Caste, and Difference
in India and the United States
Time: 4:00pm - 5:30pm
Location:Room 208, Knox Hall, 606 West 122nd Street, between Broadway and Claremont
Co-Sponsored by the Institute for Research in African-American Studies
Introduction by University Professor Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Gyanendra Pandey is Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of History and Director, Colonial and Postcolonial Studies Workshop at Emory Univeristy. He earned his D.Phil. at Oxford University, and was a founding member of the Subaltern Studies collective. Before moving to Emory, he taught for many years at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata; the University of Delhi; and the Johns Hopkins University. Pandey has held visiting appointments at institutions in Australia, India, Japan, the Netherlands, the UK and the US. His monographs include Routine Violence: Nations, Fragments, Histories (2006); The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India (rev. ed. 2006); The Ascendancy of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh: Class, Community and Nation in Northern India, 1920-1940 (rev. ed. 2002); and Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism and History in India (2001). His most recent publication compares African American and Dalit struggles: A History of Prejudice: Race, Caste and Difference in India and the USA (2013).
Monday, May 5, 2014
A talk by John Guy
Siva's Land: Defining the Religious Landscape of Early Southeast Asia
Time: 4:00pm - 5:30pm
Location: Room 207, Knox Hall, 606 West 122nd Street, between Broadway and Claremont
Introduction by Vishakha Desai, Special Advisor for Global Affairs, and Professor, School of International and Public Affairs
Author abstract: This paper will examine the central role of Saiva worship in pre-Angkorian Khmer kingship, and argue for a determining role for the Pasupatas in these seventh century Khmer territories. This legacy is preserved in many forms, including a unique Sivapada from Stung Treng province which fits into a broader setting of early Khmer Saiva worship, in which the trisula, the sacred bull and the footprint are used to invoke Siva, along with the ever-present linga, both man-made and natural, the latter widely celebrated in Cambodia as the lingaparvata.
John Guy, FSA, is the Florence and Herbert Irving Curator of the Arts of South and Southeast Asia at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and an elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, London. He was formerly Senior Curator for South Asia at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. He has served on the Councils of the European Associations of South Asia and Southeast Asian Archaeology, worked on a number of archaeological excavations, both land and maritime sites, and served as an advisor to UNESCO on historical sites in Southeast Asia.