Conference schedule

All events will be in room 1512 of the International Affairs Building at Columbia University.

Friday, February 22

9:00 am — Gathering

9:30 — Introductory words

10:00 - 11:45 — First Panel: Ramayana: Text and the World

• Robert Goldman (University of California, Berkeley)
  Expert Nation: An Epic of Antiquity in the World of Modernity
• Ajay Rao (University of Toronto)
  Sectarian Political Imagination: Srivaisnavas and the Royal Rama Cult at Vijayanagara
• Yigal Bronner (University of Chicago)
  A Text with a Thesis: The Unity of the Ramayana from Appayya Diksita's Receptive End
• Discussant: Philip Lutgendorf (University of Iowa)

12:00 - 2:00 pm — Lunch

2:00 - 3:45 pm —Second Panel: Sanskrit Literature and Literary Culture

• Sudipta Kaviraj (Columbia University)
  The Second Mahabharata
• Xi He (University of Chicago)
  Retelling a Life of the Buddha: The Narrative Aesthetics of the Lalitavistara
• Guy Leavitt (Harvard University)
  On the Making of the Moral Ideal-Typical: Situating the 'Social Aesthetic' in Medieval Kashmiri History
• Discussant: Robert Goldman (University of California, Berkeley)

Coffee Break

4:15 - 6:00 — Third Panel: Theories of the Practice: Sanskrit Knowledge Systems

• Parimal Patil (Harvard University)
  The End of The Ends of Man? The Fourth Purusartha in the Twilight of Pre-Modernity and Dawn of Modernity
• Lawrence McCrea (Cornell University)
  Standards and Practices: Following, Making, and Breaking the Rules of Sastra
• Dan Arnold (University of Chicago)
  Is Mind or Language the Fundamental Locus of Intentionality? Thoughts on Framing a Buddhist-Mimamsaka Debate
• Discussant: Christopher Minkowski (Oxford University)

Saturday, February 23

10:00 - 11:45 am — Fourth Panel: Cosmopolitan and Vernacular

• Allison Busch (Columbia University)
  Hindi Literary Beginnings
• Whitney Cox (SOAS)
  Saffron in the Rasam
• Blake Wentworth (University of Chicago)
  Native land and the Tamil tongue: Glimmers of Collective Identity in Early Tamil Literature
• Discussant: Muzaffar Alam (University of Chicago)

12:00 - 2:00 pm — Lunch

2:00 - 3:45 — Fifth Panel: Early Modernity

• Ethan Kroll (University of Chicago)
  How Can Two Opposing Views on Inheritance Be Equally Correct? 17th Century Sanskrit Discourse on the Logic Beyond Dayabhaga and Mitaksara
• Ananya Vajpeyi (University of Massachusetts)
  Caste, Power and State in the Early Maratha Polity: The Role of Sanskrit Texts
• Rajeev Kinra (Northwestern University)
  Poetic Justice: philology and the fight for cultural authority in early modern India
• Discussant: Sudipta Kaviraj (Columbia University)

Coffee break

4:15 - 6:00 — Round Table Discussion: Philology, Theory, History

• Arjun Appadurai (New School)
• Dipesh Chakrabarty (University of Chicago)
• Sheldon Pollock (Columbia University)
• Chair: Akeel Bilgrami (Columbia University)

6:00 — Concluding Remarks: Akeel Bilgrami (Columbia University)