Events
Upcoming Events
All COSAS events are free and open to the public.
Event Archive
Faith, Gender, and Activism in the Punjab Conflict: The Wheat Fields Still Whisper
Punjab was the arena of one of the major armed conflicts of post-colonial India. Mallika Kaur’s new book makes an urgent intervention in the history of the conflict, which to date has generally been characterized by a fixation on sensational violence—or ignored...
Worlds of Pleasure: Making Sense Between Place, Painting, Poetry, and Performance
Lecture by Dipti Khera, Assistant Professor of Art History, New York University, hosted by COSAS The idea of pleasure as a pivotal tenet of ideal kingship and the practice of pleasure by courtly communities to formulate and deepen personal and political bonds gains...
Everyday Evasions: Space and Strategy in Sex Markets in Colonial India
Lecture by Zoya Sameen, doctoral student of History at University of Chicago, hosted by The Nicholson Center for British Studies and The Newberry Library’s British History Seminar The historiography of prostitution in colonial India has often sidelined the routine...
TAPSA: Letter writing is the mingling of souls not the drawing near of dust: Scholarly epistolography as companionship in eighteenth-century North India
Daniel Morgan, PhD Candidate in SALC, University of Chicago Scholars of Persianate intellectual practices in early-modern South Asia generally argue that authoritative knowledge was “located primarily in persons not books” and that texts were thus transmitted in...
Maratha Mandir: Cartography of a Neighborhood Theater
The Mass Culture Workshop is pleased to welcome Jenisha Borah, PhD Student, Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago. Lunch will be served. For more information, please email either Sophie (sophielynch@uchicago.edu) or Tanya (tanyad@uchicago.edu). Dates:...
Transnational Approaches to Modern Europe Workshop at the University of Chicago
Please join the Transnational Approaches to Modern Europe Workshop, in conjunction with the Empires and Atlantics Forum and the Nicholson Center for British Studies next Friday, February 21 at 4:30 PM as we welcome Prof. Seth Koven, G.E. Lessing Distinguished...
‘Their Lordships are again at great disadvantage in not knowing Sanskrit’: the Privy Council, Mīmāṃsā, and Anantakrishna Shastri
The colonial desire to continue while reforming the pre-existing practices of civil law in British India, so as to govern according to “native” legal customs, was the original driver of the creation of modern Indology. As the British legal and scholarly...
Narratives of Siege: Understanding Buddhist/Muslim Conflicts in Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Thailand
Public lecture by John Holt, Visiting Professor of Buddhism. Why have Buddhist and Muslim communities in these three countries, after sharing centuries of largely amicable relations, found themselves recently enmeshed in conditions of inter-communal tension,...
TAPSA: Bilvamaṅgala in Bengal: Biographical Thought, Inexpressibility, and Other Mysteries
Ishan Chakrabarti, PhD Candidate in SALC, University of Chicago In 1510 Caitanya made a pilgrimage to South India, where he was captivated by the Kṛṣṇakarṇāmṛta (Ambrosia for Kṛṣṇa’s Ears), an anthology of Sanskrit verses about Kṛṣṇa written by the...
How Patrons Select Brokers: Efficacy and Loyalty in Indian Cities
Tariq Thachil, Associate Professor, Vanderbilt University. This lecture is hosted by the Department of Political Science and COSAS. Scholars of urban politics in India have yet to systematically understand how party leaders select the rank-and-file ‘brokers’,...