Events
Upcoming Events
All COSAS events are free and open to the public.
Event Archive
Southern Asia Seminar: A Vernacular Archive of Sexuality: Snapshots from Colonial North India
Charu Gupta, Professor of History, The University of Delhi Gupta's talk will draw from their research of more than thirty years on different subjects and arenas, to reflect on how and why the vernacular has been her constitutive archive to study sex and sexuality...
Dalit Studies and the Study of Caste: The State of the Field
Caste is among the oldest and most stubbornly entrenched forms of social inequality in human history. And as an object of research, it is “entangled” in intellectual and political agendas that have their own history, primarily but not exclusively tied to B. R....
TAPSA: On Being Black in Fayżi’s Nal o Daman: Poetic Adaptations of Nala and Damayantī into a Persian Mas̱navi
Alexandra Hoffman, PhD Candidate in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago Nal, one of the protagonists of Abo’l Fayż Fayżi’s (d. 1595 CE) mas̱navi Nal o Daman, loses everything in a dice-game when he finds himself possessed by ʿeshq...
75 Years Post-Partition: Artist Pritika Chowdhry on her Partition Anti-Memorial Project
In 2007, Pritika Chowdhry created her installation, Queering Mother India, an anti-memorial that examines the experience of women in the Partition of India in 1947. Since then she has continued to build on this body of work through the Partition Anti-Memorial...
From Mughal Rule to the Raj: A Conversation with William Dalrymple
Chicago Dialogues Season #2 Episode 6 Introduction by Dr. Dipesh Chakrabarty Moderators by Dr. Sunit Singh, Dr. Steven Pincus, and Dr. James M. Vaughn The shift from Mughal rule to the British Empire in South Asia has long been a subject of interest to scholars and...
SAS: ‘Like milk without butter or cream’: Money, Politics and the Hinduization of Indian Buddhism, 1920 – 1950
Douglas Ober, Visiting Fellow, Neubauer Collegium, The University of Chicago The idea that the Buddha was ‘born, lived, and died a Hindu’ and that Buddhism is a branch of Hinduism is one of the most popular tropes in India today. The novelty of this idea is only...
Agrarian Crisis and Peoples’ Movements: A Conversation with Navkiran Natt
In September 2020, the Indian Parliament passed three acts aimed at restructuring the country's agricultural sector, setting off a massive protest movement—possibly the largest in human history—among farmers, laborers, and students. These movements, known...
Nineteenth South Asia Graduate Student Conference: “Popular Aesthetics in South Asia: Sensing, consuming, appraising aesthetic forms”
The organizing committee of the Nineteenth South Asia Graduate Students Conference (SAGSC-XIX) is pleased to announce the 2022 conference, Popular Aesthetics in South Asia: Sensing, consuming, appraising aesthetic forms. The conference will take place remotely (via...
Global Reflections on Afghanistan: A Roundtable Discussion
This event will be both an in-person and virtual event. The event will be held in David Rubenstein Forum, 1201 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637. Register Here to attend either in-person or to receive a zoom link to attend virtually. In September 2021, the longest war...
Southern Asia Seminar: Gifts of Dharma. Shaping Śaiva communities between tradition and innovation
Florinda De Simini, Associate Professor of the History of Ancient and Medieval India, The University of Naples In this talk, I will focus on the rules regulating the relationships between the lay and the monastic communities of the Śaivas through the practice of...