Colloquia
Touching Care: Gandhi and the Art of Healing the Leprous Body
What does a haptic history of the most famous Indian of the twentieth century reveal—and occlude? I explore this question by turning to a set of under-analyzed photographs which show M. K. Gandhi, late in his own life, offering “touching” care to an elderly Brahmin follower…
On the Moral Theory of Harm: Caste and the Critique of Charity in Travancore
Scholars of colonial South Asia have shown that charity has a function of power: it constructs its own subject, i.e., rightful recipients, and regulates indigenous forms of giving, such as dana, into a language legible to colonial political economy. However, this account has not…
Modernity and the Marathi Theatre of the late Nineteenth Century
The talk explores the relationship between modernity and Theatre in the 19th Century Bombay Presidency. It argues that the physical settings, subject matter and the emotive aspects of Marathi theatre were deeply influenced by modern technology and modern ways of life. Based on a…
Court politics in the Vijayanagara successor states: confronting local and Dutch perspectives
This talk discusses court politics in several successor states of the south Indian Vijayanagara empire, which flourished between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. The central question is whether these royal courts should be seen as static, harmonious, and hierarchic…
The Future-Magic of Ancient Śāstraic Science: a Dharmic TESCREAL?
This talk examines the teleological narratives of scientific progress that persist in both European and Indian historiographies of science, from the Ancient Alexandrian myth of “pure rational inquiry” supposedly devoid of religion, to what Banu Subramaniam terms the "archaic…
Past Colloquia
SAST Colloquium: J. Barton Scott
The Negro Our Aryan Brother: Race, Caste, and Hindu Cosmo-Nationalism in the Transcolonial 1920s
402 Cohen Hall
249 S. 36th Street
J. Barton Scott, Professor, University of Toronto
SAST Colloquium: Charu Singh
Epistemological Change: Sastra, Vijnana, and the Categories of Knowledge in Early Twentieth Century Northern India
402 Cohen Hall, 249 S. 36th Street
Dr. Charu Singh is Assistant Professor in Non-Western History of the Sciences, University of Cambridge.
SAST Colloquium: Emma Kalb
Ambivalent Intimacies: Eunuch Lives in Mughal South Asia
402 Cohen Hall, 249 S. 36th Street
Emma Kalb, Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Pennsylvania
SAST Colloquium: Professor Anand Venkatkrishnan
"Black and Brown in Babylon: Alice Coltrane's Turiyasangitananda's Divine Revelations"
402 Cohen Hall, 249 S.36th Street
Professor Anand Venkatkrishnan is Assistant Professor of the History of Religion in South Asia, University of Chicago.
SAST Colloquium: Professor Nabanjan Maitra
The Rite to Know: Vedic Subjects and Monastic Power in 14th Century Karnataka
402 Cohen Hall
249 S. 36th Street
My talk attends to one aspect of a broader project to make sense of a hermeneutic project of self-professed universal scope: the commentary on the Vedas undertaken by the matha (monastery) of Śṛṅgeri in the latter half of the 14th century, with the support of the Sangama kings of…
