Sponsored by MESAAS and the South Asia Institute, the South Asia Graduate Students Forum (SAGSF) gives graduate students working on South Asian topics in any department the opportunity to present their work in front of faculty and fellow students as well as interested members of the public.
The typical format of each meeting is a twenty-to-thirty minute presentation, followed by twenty to thirty minutes of questions and discussion, and then a reception for an hour. Papers are not circulated beforehand and the presenters determine how formal their presentations will be.
The forum meets on Mondays several times a semester from 4:10 pm to 6 pm.
Tuesday, November 15th
4:10pm-5:30pm
Room 207, Knox Hall
Presentation by Katherine E. Kasdorf (Art History and Archaeology):
"Seeing a City Through its Temples: Halebid and the Hoysala Capital"
Examining the temples of Halebid, Karnataka - formerly Dorasamudra, capital of the Hoysala dynasty between the mid-11th and mid-14th centuries, I argue that the temples of a particular locality should be understood not only as architectural entities with various ritual and political purposes, but also as components of a greater urban setting that has historically encompassed a range of activities,
communities, and forms. By comparing the temples' architectural and
sculptural forms, their sources of patronage, and their sectarian
affiliations, and by considering the architectural character of
distinct zones and potential routes of access between surviving
features, we can understand much about the urban forms and social
organization of the Hoysala capital. Furthermore, the alterations
made to Halebid's temples and the reuse of Hoysala-period
architectural materials in temples built after the dynasty's fall
provide insight into the shifting character of the town's
neighborhoods and populations. Complicating the familiar narrative of
post-Hoysala decline and inactivity, these later constructions attest
to the town's continued vibrancy, even after the period of its highest
status as a political capital.
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The format will be:
30 minutes: presentation;
30 minutes: discussion;
thereafter reception (food and drink provided).
Past Forums:
Spring 2011
Simranjeet Singh (Religion, 21 March): Re-Textualizing Sheikh Farid: Anamnetic Authorship in 17th Century PunjabThis paper explores the ways in which oral and written texts have been transmitted across linguistic communities of premodern Punjab. It will focus specifically on the understudied but critically important personage of Sheikh Farid ad-Din Masud Ganj-e Shakkar (d. 1265 CE). Popularly known as Sheikh Farid or Baba Farid, this figure continues to be revered for his contributions to the religious and cultural milieu of South Asia. This paper will look at representations of Sheikh Farid through two closely connected Gurmukhi texts: the Adi Granth, which was compiled in 1604 by the Sikh community, and a hagiography entitled Masle Sheikh Farid Ke, which was composed in the middle of the 17th century by the Mina community. With the help of Christian Novetzke's recent work on Saint Namdev and Christopher Shackle's linguistic analysis of Southwestern Punjabi, this paper aims to explore the transmission of writings ascribed to Sheikh Farid through orality, performance, textualization, and "anamnetic authorship," while also shedding light on three underrepresented entities: Sheikh Farid, the Mina tradition, and Masle Sheikh Farid Ke.
Monday, 21 February 2011
Presentation by Mohsin Mohi-ud-Din (SIPA):
"Kashmir: The Quiet Fire of South Asia" Monday, 24 January 2011
4:10pm-6:00pm
Knox Hall, Room 208, 606 W. 122nd Street
(Between Broadway and Claremont)
Presentation by Patton Burchett (Religion):
"Two Hanumans in One: Rasiks and Yogis in Early Modern Bhakti"Andrew Ollett (MESAAS, 7 March), Monday, 7 March 2011
4:10-6:00 p.m.
Knox Hall, Room 208, 606 West 122nd Street
(Between Broadway and Claremont Avenue)
Presentation by Andrew Ollett (MESAAS):
"Metrics and the History of the Natyashastra"
The Natyashastra is the fundamental text on Indian dramaturgy and related subjects, from aesthetics to dialectology. But the text is often confusing, and its role in literary and intellectual history far from clear, owing to circumstances of its compilation and transmission about which we know relatively little. The two sections of Sanskrit and Prakrit meters, however, provide some important indirect evidence for those circumstances: the form of the definitions, the content of the examples, the sequence of meters, their treatment in the only surviving commentary, and the sources of the text can help us to understand the processes by which this important text took shape.
Fall 2010
Wednesday November 3, 4:10-6:00 p.m. Knox Hall, Room 208, 606 West 122nd Street (between Broadway and Claremont Avenue)
Presentation by Pasha Mohamad Khan (Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies)
"Marvelous Histories; Or, Ghalib and the Simurgh"
In Delhi in the 1860s, the eminent Urdu/Persian poet Mirza Asad Allah Khan Ghalib wrote a preface to a romance (dastan/qissah), in which he defended the romance genre from the belittlement of partisans of the history (tarikh). Evoking the Shahnamah to further his argument, Ghalib raises questions regarding the line between romance and history, two genres that were often opposed, but which exhibited an alarming tendency to infect one another. The paper will consider how it is that Ghalib could regard an event, creature or object as simultaneously impossible and historical. In order to do this it will distinguish between two genres of history, the intellective and the transmission-based (`aqli and naqli), and their situations in late Mughal India.
The Forum format is as follows:
20-30 minutes: Presentation
20-30 minutes: Q & A and discussion
60 minutes: Reception (food, samosa etc., and drink provided)
MESAAS organizes or co-sponsors the following regular events:
