Events
Upcoming Events
All COSAS events are free and open to the public.
Event Archive
Southern Asia Seminar: Ramasamy and Ramayana: Periyar’s Critique of Hinduism
Karthick Ram Manoharan, Marie-Sklodowska Curie Actions Individual Fellow, University of Wolverhampton In his lifetime and after, Periyar gained much notoriety for his acerbic comments on the Hindu epic Ramayana and the Hindu god Rama. As is commonly known in South...
Southern Asia Seminar: How to Read (At the Bottom of the Sea, For Example): On Reading Candrakīrti’s In Lucid Words (Prasannapadā) with Bibhuti S. Yadav
Sonam Kachru, Assistant Professor, Department of Religious Studies, University of Virginia The tragically short-lived philosopher and theologian Bibhuti S. Yadav (1943-1999) often returned to the Buddhist Candrakīrti’s In Lucid Words (circa 7th century C.E.), a...
Dismantling Global Hindutva
This conference will convene panels on a variety of interlinked topics that address the threat and power of Hindutva. Scholars, journalists, and activists will examine the historical development of Hindutva, the fascist dimensions of the ideology, its alignment...
The Individuated ‘Dividual’ or What is Culture Good For?
Usha Tummala-Narra (Boston College) & Sean M. Dowdy (University of Chicago) This event will take the theme of “solitude” into the psychoanalytic clinic where we will think about it in relation to questions of culture and immigration. The event is being...
The Language Variation and Change workshop presents Andrew Ollett speaking on “Middle Indo-Iranian
Andrew Ollett (SALC, University of Chicago) The Iranian and Indic languages are separated, on a map, by the Indus river, but linguists have long known about contact phenomena on either side. We have written records in these languages going back more than two...
South Asia Seminar: “How Gandhi matters today”
Ajay Skaria, Professor of History, University of Minnesota Already in his own time, and ever more so in the last four decades, Gandhi’s politics have been subjected to powerful critiques from the left. While many of these critiques are entirely correct, they can,...
South Asia Seminar: The Politics of Language: Popular Sovereignty and the Language Movement in East Pakistan
Ahona Panda, Humanities Teaching Fellow, the University of Chicago The question of the state language of East Pakistan was debated at length in parliament and in civil society between 1948 and 1956. While West Pakistan tried to impose Urdu as the sole state...
South Asian Students Association: Once Upon A Time Show
The SASA Show is back! Though it's not in-person, we are super excited to share with you the 34th annual SASA Show (the first ever virtual one). We'll be live-streaming it on Saturday, May 22nd at noon so save the date! This year, our performances include Chicago...
The Devourers: A Conversation with Author Indrapramit Das
Please join us for a conversation with Calcutta-based author, critic, and editor Indrapramit Das. His debut novel, The Devourers, won the 29th Annual Lambda Award in LGBT SF/F/Horror category and was shortlisted for the 2016 Crawford Award. It was also nominated...
Chicago Tamil Formum Keynote Address: Law at Large: Notes on the Public Mediation of Community in the Juridical Field
Francis Cody, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto Legal reporting at the Madras High Court serves as a site to better understand how public images of the law bear on questions of caste, gender, and political community. Beginning with a famous and...