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September 7 - Noon - 1 PM
206 Ingraham Hall

Fall Semester Reception

Faculty, Students, and Friends, please join us for a welcome reception to celebrate the beginning of the Fall semester. Conversation, food and drinks to share!

September 21 - Noon - 1 pm
206 Ingraham Hall

"Measuring the Harappan World: Insights into the Indus Order and Cosmology"

J. Mark Kenoyer, Director, Center for South Asia ; Professor, Department of Anthropology, UW-Madison

The origins of certain types of weights and measures in South Asia can be traced back to the earliest cities of the Indus civilization. This illustrated lecture will present an overview of the types of artifacts that inform us about ancient Harappan measurement systems, in order to gain insight into their concepts of order and cosmology.

Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, Professor of Anthropology, teaches archaeology and ancient technology at the University of Wisconsin , Madison . He has taught at Madison since 1985 and is currently Director for the Center for South. His main focus is on the Indus Valley Civilization. He has worked in Pakistan and India for the past 26 years. Dr. Kenoyer was born in India and lived there until he came to the U.S. for college. He has a BA in Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley and completed his MA and PhD (1983) in South Asian Archaeology from the same university. He has conducted archaeological research and excavations at both Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, two of the most important early sites in Pakistan, and has also worked in western and central India. He has a special interest in ancient technologies and crafts, socio-economic and political organization as well as religion. These interests have led him to study a broad range of cultural periods in South Asia as well as other regions of the world.

Since 1986 he has been the Co-director and Field Director of the Harappa Archaeological Research Project in Pakistan , a long term study of urban development in the Indus Valley . He was Guest Curator at the Elvehjem Museum of Art, Madison for the exhibition on the Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization, which toured the U.S. in 1998-1999. His work was most recently featured in a special 2005 issue of Scientific American and on the website http://www.harappa.com.

October 5- Noon-1 pm
206 Ingraham Hall
“Fiscal Strains in the Indian Federation”

Indira Rajaraman, Senior Fellow, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, Delhi

The focus of the talk is on the absence of a standing fiscal adjudication body between layers of government in the Indian fiscal federation.  This is set in the context of the big India growth story, which has been accompanied by widening spatial disparities in rates of growth. 

The first section of the talk will outline the basic institutional features of the Indian fiscal structure in terms of statutory provisions for redressing spatial inequalities. Finance Commissions are appointed every five years to re-set the formulae governing the statutory sharing of fiscal resources between the Centre and the States.

The second section will deal with the issues consequent upon the recommendations of theTwelfth Finance Commission (TFC) for the horizon 2005-10. The third section will go into other issues of more long standing, calling for resolution. The lack of participatory outcomes to these inter-governmental issues carries growth and development implications, since it is at the level of state governments where responsibility for health and school education is the greatest.

 

October 12 - Noon-1 pm
206 Ingraham Hall
"The Tata Group and the Changing Face of Indian Investment in the US " 

David Good, Chief Representative - North America The Tata Group

David Good joined the Tata Group on February 1, 2005 after completing a 34-year career with the U.S. Department of State. His last position with the State Department was Director of the Office of India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Maldives Affairs, following a three-year stint as American Consul General in Mumbai (Bombay), India from 1999-2002, where he promoted US-India trade relations and represented American interests in the six states of western India. During his career in the Foreign Service, he also served as Public Affairs Officer at the American Embassies in Tel Aviv, Israel ; in Amman, Jordan ; in Kuwait City , Kuwait ; and at the American Consulate General in Jerusalem, where he specialized in Arab-Israeli issues.

From 1997-1999, he was Director of the Office of North African, Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs at the U.S. Information Agency in Washington, and responsible for U.S. Government education, exchange and information programs across the Middle East and South Asia. From 1989-1991, he was Spokesman and Director of Public Affairs at the Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs Bureau of the State Department. He served in previous assignments in Calcutta and New Delhi, India and in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates .

He is married to the former Ila Jasani of Calcutta and has two daughters: Mallika, who is a graduate student at George Washington University , and Maya, who is a senior at Smith College. They make their home in Virginia , near Washington , D.C.

Read David Good's Article "Good Tidings"

 

October 19 - 5:30 pm
L140 Elvehjem/Chazen
“The Khalsa Heritage Museum , India : A Work in Progress”

Bani Singh, Independent Design Consultant at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India

This lecture is co-sponsored by University Lectures, the Art History Department, and Environment, Textiles and Design

A museum encapsulating 500 years of the tumultuous history of the Sikhs is being built at the historical site of Anandpur Sahib in India.  The architect Moshe Safdie has designed the museum known as the Khalsa Heritage comp lex while the content, artefact exhibits and installations have been entrusted to the National Institute of Design and their team of consultants.

The talk will describe the design concept and the process used in selecting the content for the museum's narrative.  While weaving together the history and the legends with the rich poetry and music of the land, the biggest challenges have been about representing the religious and sacred symbols of a living tradition using appropriate and invisible technology so that it does not overpower viewers, and effectively communicating with a wide spectrum of people that will range from the international traveler, to visitors from other parts of India and the Sikhs from rural and urban Punjab. 

Finally, the talk will consider the insights that 500 years of history throw on the present and that provide an opportunity to reflect on how the present is formed by the past, and how geographical boundaries can shape mindscapes.  Such a talk will present new perspectives on a little-known South Asian religion and visual culture and the challenges of re-presenting complex cultural and historical matters in a museum setting.  It relates directly to central issues in the fields of museum studies, art history, visual culture, design and the arts, as well as South Asian history and religion -- all areas of distinguished study and research at our University.

 

October 26- Noon - 1 pm
206 Ingraham Hall

"Urban Traditions of the Early Historic Period: Excavations at the Ancient City of Sisupalgarh, India"

Monica L. Smith, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, UCLA

South Asia ’s social landscape was vibrant and diverse in the Early Historic period (early centuries BC/AD). Buddhist and Jain traditions grew and were manifested in both architecture and literature, and there was widespread trade within the subcontinent and beyond to the Roman Mediterranean and Southeast Asia . More than 60 large urban centers of this period are known archaeologically throughout the Indian subcontinent, providing points of intersection across a variety of political and social networks. With reference to the ongoing excavations at the ancient city of Sisupalgarh, this lecture will explore how we can use literary and archaeological information to understand the appeal of Early Historic cities for both elites and ordinary residents.

Monica L. Smith is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology, UCLA. Her research interests include urbanism, material culture, and archaeological theory. She is the editor of The Social Construction of Ancient Cities (2003) and author of The Archaeology of an Early Historic Town in Central India (2001). Her present research utilizes diverse archaeological and textual sources to understand the actions of ordinary people in the past. She is currently co-directing excavations at Sisupalgarh with R.K. Mohanty of Deccan College (Pune, India).

This lecture is co-sponsored by University Lectures, and the Anthropology Department.

November 2 - Noon - 1 pm
206 Ingraham Hall

"Tales of Sinister Yogis"

David Gordon White, Professor, Department of Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Medieval Indian literature is replete with tales of dark and mysterious figures called Yogis, whose "yoga" consists not in meditation, postures and breath control, but rather in hostile takeovers of other people's bodies. Professor David Gordon White, who is exploring this literary theme in his current research, traces its origins back the Hindu epics, and argues that the yogic "yoking" of other people's bodies is in fact the most ancient and pervasive of all of India's yoga traditions.

David Gordon received his Ph.D. from the Divinity School at University of Chicago in 1988. He also studied Hinduism at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris. He is the author of three books: Myths of the Dog-Man (1991); The Alchemical Body: Siddha Traditions in Medieval India (1996); and Kiss of the Yogin: Tantric Sex in its South Asian Contexts (2003).

 

November 9 - Noon - 1 pm
206 Ingraham Hall

"Geographical Imagination and Communal Identity in the Sarasvati Purana" 

Elizabeth Mary Rohlman, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Religious Studies, University of Virginia.

The Sarasvati Purana is a Sanskrit sthala-purana composed in medieval Gujarat.  Its narrative frame relates the story of Sarasvati’s descent to earth as a river and her long journey through Gujarat to join the western ocean at Prabhasa-Somnath.  The account of Sarasvati’s course through Gujarat is employed to define the boundaries of the medieval region of Gujarat, while the text’s many sub-narratives articulate the cultural and religious traditions of the region.  Thus, while the Sarasvati Purana maps a sacred geography of Gujarat, it simultaneously defines the content of the region’s literary, historical, and religious traditions.  However, the textual vision of these traditions is hardly unified.  The fourteen extant manuscripts of the Sarasvati preserve two recensions of the text, which present two distinct and conflicting theological visions.  This paper will explore the tensions of textual boundaries and sectarian boundaries present in the two recensions, and consider the ways in which these two distinct traditions participate in a cultural concept of the Sarasvati Purana as a singular text. 

Elizabeth Rohlman is a Ph.D candidate in Religious Studies at the University of Virginia.  Her research focus is on the role of narrative literature, especially regional puranic literature in Sanskrit, in articulating and defining religious identity.

November 16 - Noon - 1 pm
206 Ingraham Hall

"Prospects of Peace and War in Sri Lanka"

A panel discussion with UW-faculty members: Charles Hallisey, Associate Professor, Department of Languages and Cultures of Asia, Aseema Sinha, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Sumudu Atapattu, Associate Director, Global Legal Studies Initiative.

Over the last six months Sr11/16/2006i Lanka has slid back into a state of war and ongoing humanitarian crisis. As many civilians have died in Sri Lanka over these months as did in the recent Israeli-Hezbollah conflict in Lebanon . This panel will give an update of what has been happening with attention to prospects for peace and war in the near future.

 

November 30 - Noon - 1 pm
206 Ingraham Hall

“ Turning Nets into Nests: Geography, History, and the Last Mughal Poet”

Syed Akbar Hyder, Assistant Professor, Department of Asian Studies, University of Texas at Austin

Sayyid Ahmad Khan, in the early 1850s, asked Ghalib to assess the historical merits of A’in-i Akbari­an important account of the Mughal emperor Akbar’s rule written by Abu Fazl­by writing a short review of this text. Cognizant of the value of this text for its own time, the sixteenth century, Ghalib refused to sing the praises of Abu Fazl’s treatise in the nineteenth century and compared it to an old, useless calendar. This paper explores the socio-political implications of Ghalib’s refusal during his own time and the message that continues in subsequent decades, as Ghalib is deployed as Urdu’s first “Progressive” voice. It calls attention to the interface of religious devotion, poetic license, and political exigencies that constituted Ghalib’s Persian and Urdu oeuvre on one hand and his legacy on the other. The poetics of turning an aristocrat into a comrade of the downtrodden provide the larger framework for this study.

Syed Akbar Hyder, is an Assistant Professor, in the Department of Asian Studies, at the University of Texas at Austin . His fields of specialization are: Indo-Muslim Cultures, Islamic History, Persian-Urdu Literary Traditions, and Islam in the West.

 

December 7 - Noon-1 pm
206 Ingraham Hall

"Seeing the Dance that can't be seen: Masked Gods and Everyday Esoteric Meanings in Newar Religion."

Linda Iltis, Lecturer, Comparative Religion, International Studies, South Asian and African Studies University of Washington.

The Harasiddhi, Pachali Bhairav, and Sīkālī Pyākhan, ritual dance dramas of Kathmandu Valley, are all historically significant for understanding Newar religious identities. The absence of sustained dialogue in these performances, however, leaves audiences, performers and researchers wide room for interpretation of meanings ranging from free association to the esoteric. This talk explores the challenges of eliciting, interpreting, and untangling the complex web of polyvalent multiple meanings.

Linda Iltis is a Lecturer in Comparative Religion and South Asian Studies at University of Washington, Seattle, WA. She earned her doctorate in 1985 from University of Wisconsin, South Asia Program, writing her dissertation about Newar women and ritual and translating the Newari Swasthānī Vrata Katha. Her research areas include women and religion, Hinduism and Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, shamanism, spirit possession, ritual healing, Newar ritual dramas, and anthropology of South Asia. Over the last 30 years, she has conducted research primarily in Nepal, also in India and Sri Lanka, and among South Asian immigrant communities in the U.S. She has also begun comparative research in Ghana, West Africa on spirit possession and healing. Her interdisciplinary publications feature studies of goddesses; space, place, and identity; women’s agency and identity in Nepal; expressive culture; ritual performance; and spirit possession.

She authored a textbook for and regularly teaches a course: Introduction to World Religions: Eastern Traditions, for University of Washington Online Learning Program , and has published numerous articles on goddess traditions and women and religions of Nepal . She is currently completing a book manuscript on The Goddess of Self and the Power of Place.

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