Centre for South Asian Studies Graduate Symposium

*If you have any difficulty accessing the Zoom links, please email asian.institute@utoronto.ca or ai.asianstudies@utoronto.ca for assistance.*

Following a successful first year symposium which featured a range of emerging research of graduate students working in and across South Asian Studies, this year’s 2022 online symposium is broadly framed around the key theme of “The Everyday.” As we complete another year of ongoing, intersecting pandemics, the realities of everyday life are increasingly transformed. We are interested in what different forms the “everyday” has taken and continues to take in relation to and/or in diasporic and continental South Asia. The “everyday” calls on us to think about and beyond the mundane and the spectacular, public and private spaces, acts of resistance, hegemonies, and more. How do expressions of the everyday look within material archives, political movements, or domestic spaces? How do people today and in the past conceive of their “everyday,” and how have scholars of South Asia theorized it?

This event was conceived by students at the Centre for South Asian Studies in the Asian Institute at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy as a platform for students engaging in critical research connected to South Asia. We invite students, faculty, professionals, and practitioners of South Asian Studies from across geographies to engage with and learn about emerging research in the field.

KEYNOTE ADDRESS

Effecting and Affecting Emotion: When Words are not Innocent

Veena Das

Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University

* Registrants must register separately for the keynote address: https://tinyurl.com/KeynoteVeenaDas

IMPORTANT REGISTRATION INFORMATION

In addition to the opening remarks and keynote address (registration link above), which will be presented as a Zoom webinar, there will be one Zoom meeting link for the panel presentations portion of Day 1 and one Zoom meeting link for the panel presentations portion Day 2 of the symposium, as well as a separate Zoom meeting link for the Ethics Roundtable. A few days prior to the symposium, registrants will receive the Zoom meeting links by email.

VISIT THE SYMPOSIUM WEBSITE

SCHEDULE

Day 1 | Thursday, April 21, 2022 | 10:00 AM – 3:30 PM EDT

10:00 AM – 11:30 AM | Keynote Address: Effecting and Affecting Emotion: When Words are not Innocent

Professor Veena Das (Department of Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University)

11:30 AM – 11:40 AM | Break

11:40 AM – 1:10 PM | Panel 1: Everyday in the South Asian Diaspora

Discussant: Professor J. Barton Scott

• Abarna Selvarajah (OISE, University of Toronto): Exploring the Everyday of “Settled” Tamil-Canadian Women: Life and identity beyond the first few years of arrival
• Tahsina Akhter (Department of Anthropology, Memorial University of Newfoundland): Everyday Political Ecology of South Asian Women’s Becoming of Food Entrepreneur in Toronto
• Aqeel Ihsan (Department of History, York University): Feasts and Festivals: A History of Goan-Canadians
• Atif Khan (Department of Geography & Planning, University of Toronto): Everyday Corpses: Area, Region and Systems

1:10 PM – 2:00 PM | Lunch Break

2:00 PM – 3:15 PM | Panel 2: Everyday in the Early Modern

Discussant: Professor Karen Ruffle

• Jonmani Das (Department of History, Jawaharlal Nehru University): "Making a Civic Community": Governing social and moral life of inhabitants of Madras in the seventeenth century
• Stephanie Duclos-King (Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto): The Exceptional Everyday: A Missionary’s Call to Service in South India
• Jesse Pruitt (Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto): Childhood’s End: Ramalinga Swamigal’s Reappraisal of the Devotion of Youth

Day 2 | Friday, April 22, 2022 | 10:00 AM – 3:30 PM EDT

10:00 AM – 11:30 AM | Panel 3: Everyday through Media

Discussant: Professor Francis Cody

• Ayub Khan (Department of Political Science, University of Toronto): Farmer’s Movement: Do tweets and hashtags expose India’s electoral autocracy?
• Darsana Vijay (Faculty of Information, University of Toronto): The Everyday Struggles of Indian Alternative Journalists on Facebook: An initial exploration into the platformization of Indian journalism
• Mayadevi Murthy (Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto): An “Everyday Amman” for the Everyday Tamil: Tamil religion in the time of Hindutva
• Shaktipada Kumar (Department of English, Cooch Behar Panchanan Barma University): Everyday Communication in the Age of Digital Revolution: An Inquiry into the Orality and Indigeneity of the Purulia Region

11:30 AM – 11:40 AM | Break

11:40 AM – 1:20 PM | Panel 4: Everyday in the Texts and Literature of South Asia

Discussant: Professor Christoph Emmrich

• Ian Turner (Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto): The Everyday as a Time for Critique: Motilaxmi Shakya's prospective memoir
• Liwen Liu (Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto): Transferring into Everyday: Transference and Modification of a Purificatory Ritual
• Ge Ge (Department of South Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies, University of Vienna): Everyday Transmission of Knowledge: The Origin of the Vaiśeṣika(sūtra)
• Mirela Stosic (Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto): Taniyans as an Expression of Bhakti to One's Teacher and a Means to Build Guruparamapara of the Śrīvaiṣṇavas
• Tamara Cohen (Department for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto): Affording Enlightenment: Yogic Huts and Caves in the Mokṣopāya

1:20 PM – 2:00 PM | Lunch Break

2:00 PM – 3:30 PM | Roundtable Discussion: Ethical Practice in the Everyday (for students only)

How do we practice ethics in the neoliberal everyday of the academy? Join us for a student and early career-focused discussion led by postdoctoral scholars at the University of Toronto.

• Dr. Mark Balmforth
• Dr. Madhavi Jha
• Dr. Heleen De Jonckheere
• Dr. Nadine Plachta
• Dr. William Stafford Jr.

3:30-3:40 PM | Concluding Remarks