Events
Upcoming Events
All COSAS events are free and open to the public.
Event Archive
Regimes of Knowledge in the Early Indic World, Part of the 2019-2020 Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society, Śāstram: Form, Power, and Translation in Indic Scholasticism
Venue: Franke Institute for the Humanities, Room S-102, Regenstein Library, open to all members of the University community The domain of śāstra – disciplined, textualized systematic thought, composed in Sanskrit and other languages – forms premodern southern...
South Asia Seminar: Plotting Malaiyaham: Life and Work among Northern Hill Country Tamils in Postwar Sri Lanka
Mythri Jegathesan, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Santa Clara University This talk is based on exploratory research conducted in two districts in Sri Lanka’s Northern Province since July 2018 and is in conversation with ethnographic fieldwork...
TAPSA: Mai Misra, Multivalence and Materiality in the Sidi (African-Indian) Sufi Tradition
Jazmin Graves, doctoral candidate in South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago This presentation explores multivalent conceptions of the African Sufi saints honored in Gujarat and Maharashtra in order to analyze the veneration of Mai Misra in...
TAPSA: Mai Misra, Multivalence and Materiality in the Sidi (African-Indian) Sufi Tradition
Jazmin Graves, doctoral candidate in South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago This presentation explores multivalent conceptions of the African Sufi saints honored in Gujarat and Maharashtra in order to analyze the veneration of Mai Misra in...
South Asia Seminar: “After the “Unthinkable”: Cheran’s Poetry”
South Asia Seminar: Anushiya Ramaswamy, Professor of English, Department of English Language and Literature, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville “After the "Unthinkable": Cheran's Poetry” This is part of the introduction to the forthcoming translation of...
South Asia Seminar: Making a World with a Word: Language, Intimacy, and Ethicality among Thirunangai Transgender Women in Chennai, India
Aniruddhan Vasudevan, PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin The Tamil word ‘Thirunangai’ is currently the most preferred and widely used identity label among transgender women in Chennai. Free of pejorative meanings, indexing...
TAPSA talk: “Testing Satsang: Standardized Testing and Transnational Organizing in Swaminarayan Hinduism”
Andrew Kunze, doctoral candidate in Divinity School, University of Chicago In recent decades, some guru-led bhakti movements have instituted standardized testing for their devotees, which recasts test-taking as a devotional exercise, regularizes theological...
“The Hidden Histories of South Asian Chicago”
A fundraising event to support the South Asian American Digital Archive Celebrating 140 years of South Asian American history and the hidden stories of South Asians in Chicago. A fundraising event to support the South Asian American Digital Archive Thursday,...
South Asia Seminar: Brahmins Tryst With Brahminism
Suraj Yengde, Shorenstein Center Post-Doctoral Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School Can Brahmins participate in the anti-caste struggle? Has there been any history of Brahmins taking upon the Brahmin community to fight bigotry and oppression? History is laden with such...
South Asia Seminar: ‘We Were Always Buddhist:’ Dalit Historiography and the Temporality of Caste
Lucinda Ramberg, Professor in Anthropology, Cornell University In 1956 anti-caste philosopher and statesman Dr. B.R. Ambedkar called upon his followers to convert to Buddhism as the equalitarian religion of the original inhabitants of the subcontinent. Drawing on...