On Climate Change with Niaz Ahmed Khan

Press Release: Portraits of Resistance:

Portraits of Resistance:

An Exhibition of Contemporary 

Sri Lankan Art

Presented by

The Department of Sociology

South Asian University

New Delhi

In collaboration with

India International Centre, New Delhi

Society and Culture in South Asia

India-Sri Lanka Foundation, Delhi

Theertha International Artists Collective, Colombo

23 to 28 August 2016 from 11.00 am to 07.00 pm daily at the

Main Art Gallery, Kamaladevi Complex, IIC

The Idea

Pala Poyhupitiye, Landscape Series 1 (2012); Printed images, acrylic paint on watercolor paper

History is an inescapable process. As human beings, our bodies are inscribed with connotations that in many ways defy temporalities of existence. But our historically marked bodies dwell in a present with a desire to invent the future. Human beings’ desire to root themselves to a place and space where identity, communality and belonging matters to a great extent, and the urge to trace historical trajectories to know the ‘true’ past has obsessed humankind.

Anura Krishantha, Untitled II, (2016); Acrylic on paper

Within the discourse of visual art, artists have been unhesitating in interrogating history in the collective and individual memory, and often their interventions and engagements with historicity and remembrances have brought out narratives of resistance, voices of disquiet and foreboding aesthetics where the society is made not to forget. In this process, history is interpreted, recounted and mediated within their artistic personalities and particular intentions. In the hands of artists, temporality is extended, made to suspend or warped thereby letting history lose its linearity of progression. Allegory and metaphors in their aesthetic exercises add layers to the already subjective memories and selective histories framed via multiple interpretations.

Jagath Weerasinge, 'The Cause of Illness' (2011); Mixed Media on Paper

Each of the participating artists in this exhibition has tried to capture a portrait of a nation whose historical trajectory has gone through strained moments that are heavy with colonial legacies, homeland claims, armed conflict, autocratic rule and polarized ethnic politics.

Anoli Perera, 'White Chair I: Silent Sitters' (2015); Wooden Chair, Cloth Balls, Photos and Glass Balls

Participating Artists

Jagath Weerasinghe, Anoli Perera, Bandu Manamperi, Pala Pothupitiya, Anura Krishanta, Pradeep Chandrasiri, Pradeep Talawatte, Thisath Thoradeniya and Pushpakumara Koralegedera.

A Conversation with Shiv Visvanathan

Society and Culture in South Asia (the journal of the Department of Sociology, South Asian University, co-Published by Sage India) in collaboration with 'Rickshaw - A Students’ Collective' at Department of Sociology, South Asian University present, ‘A Conversation with Shiv Visvanathan’.

Date and time: 23 September 2016, Friday, 2:30 pm -5 pm.

Venue:  FSI Hall, Akbar Bhawan, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi.

To participate in the conversation, please send your question(s) related to the writings and politics of Shiv Visvanathan latest by 5 September 2016 to the following email address: rickshaw.editors@gmail.com

Youth Geographies in/of Contemporary South Asia

Department of Sociology

Faculty of Social Sciences
South Asian University

Presents

Young Scholars’ Conference – 20-22 October 2016

Youth Geographies in/of Contemporary South Asia

Call for Papers

Particularly in the West, there have been numerous studies of youth ‘cultures’ and ‘sub cultures’, and the lives of youth as refracted by class and ethnicity, space and place, gender and sexuality, media, the politics of multiculturalism, artistic production and forms of consumption. By contrast, youth has not historically been a central category in South Asian sociology. However firstly, recent demographic changes have forced South Asian scholars to rethink youth as a category. According to statistical reports, across South Asia[1], youth (defined as those below 25) form at least 40 percent of the total population of any South Asian country, with the numbers ranging from 40 % at the lowest in Sri Lanka to almost 65% in Afghanistan at the highest (Wadley 2015: 14-15). Secondly, and more critically, as authors like Mark Leichty (1995) write, the younger generation appears to be coming to age in often completely new socio-economic and political circumstances, from the generation before. In this context, an emergent literature suggests that the youth are critical to any understanding of the future trajectory of South Asian nations, particularly in relation to 1) education, work and employment, 2) mass consumption, media and new technologized networks, 3) politics and social movements, as well as 4) gender and sexuality, in terms of new gender conventions and subventions, as well as new forms of sexual engagements. 

Youth as understood here, is not a fixed category defined by age, but in many ways is the “beginning of a long-term, even lifelong, engagement in particular cultural practices” (Bucholtz 2002: 526). Youth should be treated as social and political actors in their own right. Thus, youth geographies, as we understand them, can be understood as sites of transition, engagement and re-creation of existing, and emergent, structural socio-economic, political and cultural conditions. 

Based on this premise, and as part of their annual intellectual calendar, the graduate students of the Department of Sociology at South Asian University present the annual Young Scholars Conference on the specific theme ‘Youth Geographies in/of Contemporary South Asia’, which is open to other graduate students, young researchers and teachers. We invite empirically grounded papers which critically reflect on youth cultures and geographies in South Asia through any of the following foci: 

• Geographies of work, working conditions, and aspirations of, and for, work
• Consumption, self-improvement, consuming-fashioning, friendships and community
• Social movements, politics, leadership, new practices of solidarity, activism and networking
• The use of social media, knowledge flows, circulation and citation
• Nationalism, internationalism, trans-nationalism, and new forms of politics
• Relevant histories: how we imagine who we are, and where we are going
• Growing up with war, war-like conditions, conflict and civil war, the politics of reconstruction
• Gendered and queer lives, new forms of family, mobility and new anxieties-hostilities, new forms of sexuality and sexual engagement, gendered and queer politics and social movements
• Hope, disappointment, time-pass, alterity: imagining new futures
• Popular culture, film, music and television, youth and creative expression
• Education and student life 
• Migration 
• Youth and authority, inter-generational conflict, youth and the state

The conference focus here is on understanding structural conditions, representations, experiences and meaning, as well as the practices of youth individuals and communities themselves, including within new political economies of work, education, and employment, mediatized, technologized, lifestyle and consumptive dispensations, as well as political and social movements. We are interested in considering new forms of engagement, self-fashioning, experimentation, negotiation and sociality, in relation to the above, including the emerging contours of young gendered and sexual lives and conduct, while welcoming papers on other relevant topics. We believe that youth, and young scholars by extension are uniquely positioned to conduct research with youth communities, perhaps with better access than that available to older, and more experienced scholars. In this sense, the Young Scholars Conference, particularly on this theme aims at incubating vital scholarship in the South Asian context.

Eligibility 

Papers are invited from candidates in MA and MPhil/PhD programs in the arts, social sciences and humanities at recognized universities and research organizations in South Asia. We also welcome contributions from individuals who are currently not enrolled in any university provided no more than one year has passed since their graduation from at least an MA programme.

Submission of Guidelines 

Initially, by July 1 2016, an abstract of no more than 500 words has to be forwarded by email as an attachment to: The Coordinator, Young Scholars’ Conference, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, South Asian University, Akbar Bhawan, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi 110021, India. Email address: scholars-conf@soc.sau.ac.in 

Authors of selected abstracts will be informed by email by August 1 2016, and complete papers have to be submitted for plagiarism review by October 1 2016. 

As part of the programme, we will have one screening session and one panel devoted to digital media forms produced by young practitioners themselves. Applicants interested in submitting their media forms (short films, video installations, podcasts, photography, websites/blogs etc.) should include a sample of their work, along with a written abstract, by the above deadlines.

Submission Format 

• Abstract: 500 words; font should be Calibri point 11; 1.5 line spacing; no references and no footnotes; 
• Papers: no more than 7,000 words including footnotes and references; font should be Calibri point 11; 1.5 line spacing. For referencing and style guidelines please visit: http://www.sau.ac.in/pdf/SAU-SOC-JournalStyleGuide.pdf 
• Abstracts and papers must be submitted as MS Word documents via email; 
• The name of the file should be YourName_InstitutionAffiliation_Department Affiliation; 
• The subject of the email should be: SOC-FSS-SAU-Young Scholars and Researchers Conference 2016. 
• For those interested in submitting media-based work, along with abstract, please send a synopsis of the work, along with a media sample and/or 5 minute trailer. 
• All abstracts/synopsis and samples should be sent to the Coordinator – Young Scholars’ Conference: scholars-conf@soc.sau.ac.in

Inquiries

All inquiries should be addressed to the Coordinator – Young Scholars’ Conference: scholars-conf@soc.sau.ac.in

[1] South Asia here denotes India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, the Maldives, and Bhutan.

Sociology and Social Anthropology in/for South Asia

Contributions to Contemporary Knowledge Lecture - 2016

The fourth instalment of the annual lecture series hosted by the Faculty of Social Sciences, South Asian University will be held on Friday, the September 02, 2016 at Seminar Rooms, 1, 2 and 3 at the Kamla Devi Complex, India International Center.

The lecture will be delivered by Professor Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History at Harvard University on the theme, ‘Oceans and Continents: The Sea in South Asian Identities.’

In his work, Prof Bose focuses on modern South Asian and Indian Ocean history. His books include His Majesty's Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India's Struggle against Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011) and A Hundred Horizons: the Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.) Of interest to scholars working in the intersections of sociology, history and political studies is Prof Bose’s attempt in A Hundred Horizons to transgress area studies and other disciplinary frontiers to link issues of culture with political economy. 

The event will facilitated by Society and Culture in South Asia and the Department of Sociology, South Asian University.

More information will be available soon.

Manosh Chowdhury@Sociology@SAU

Daring to Dissent: Exploring the Art of Khalid Albaih

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'The Paradox of Bangladesh' in Conversation with Manosh Chowdhury