September
18 - Noon - 1 PM
206 Ingraham Hall
"Patently Modern--The
Evolving Debates Over
Intellectual Property Law in India "
Shubha Ghosh
Professor
of Law, UW Law School &
Associate Director, INSITE,
UW Business School
Shubha Ghosh holds a PhD in economics from The
University of Michigan, and a JD from Stanford. He has been a
professor at SUNY Buffalo Law School. Southern Methodist University
School of Law, and the Department of Economics at The University
of Texas at Austin and has given guest lectures at the National
Law School of India University in Bangalore and at NALSAR in
Hyderabad.
From attempts to patent traditional medicinal know-how by pharmaceutical companies to legal battles over place names and folk art forms, India has been a forum for debates over the scope, contours and need for intellectual property law. This talk will present some of these debates and place them in the context of the academic debate in the area of law and development.
September
22 - Noon - 1 PM
206 Ingraham Hall
"Living in a Tough Neighborhood:
Pakistan's War among the People"
Ejaz Haider
Op-Ed Editor, Daily
Times
Consulting Editor, The Friday Times, Host of political talk-show "The Alternative," on
Dawn News, Pakistan's only English-language news channel
Haider's areas of interest include politics,
political Islam, defence and security, theories and concepts
of war, and civil-military relations. He has written extensively
on these subjects for various publications in addition to his
own. These include The Washington Post, International Herald
Tribune, Beirut-based Daily Star, the Indian Express, Times of
India, India Abroad, Central Asia Monitor and The World Today,
a monthly publication of the Royal Institute for International
Relations in London.
In addition to his reporting and editing work and analyses, Haider has been
a Ford Scholar at the Programme in Arms Control, Disarmament and International
Security at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Visiting Fellow
in the Foreign Policy Studies Programme at the Brookings Institution at Washington
D.C.
Haider has also lectured at various universities and institutions abroad.
At home he regularly speaks at the National Defence University, Command and Staff
College, Quetta, the National Institute of Public Administration (NIPA) and Administrative
Staff College, both in Lahore.
The biggest internal security challenge facing Pakistan today arises
from developments in Afghanistan. The United States' war in Afghanistan has plunged
Pakistan into a politically and militarily unsustainable situation at home. The
direct ad indirect costs of the conflict are steadily increasing as extremist
groups continue to attack US and NATO-ISAF troops in Afghanistan and Pakistan
security forces within. The US military is increasingly getting impatient and
has begun attacking targets on Pakistani territory. The recent US Special Forces
heliborne attack in South Waziristan has caused deep resentment in Pakistan at
all levels and for the first time Islamabad summoned the US ambassador and issued
a demarche. The Pakistani military has said that in the future it will retaliate
and if need be engage intruding troops. The internal security thus has a direct
foreign policy dimension.
Given the deteriorating situation, there is need to see if all concerned
actors need a policy shift. Pakistan alone cannot help correct the situation
especially with the presence of other actors like Iran, Russia and India.
The talk will focus on Pakistan's counter-terrorism efforts, the US role
in Afghanistan, the inability of Kabul to take control of its territory, the
Russia factor given increasing tension between Moscow and Washington and the
Indian strategy to trouble Pakistan. What is all this likely to lead to and is
there a way to improve the situation.
September
25 - 4:00PM - 5:15PM
336 Ingraham Hall
"Customary Organizations and the Foundations
of State Building in Afghanistan: The Role of Maliks, Mullahs,
and Jirgas in Local Governance"
Jennifer
Brick
PhD Candidate, Department of Political Science, UW-Madison
Jennifer Brick is a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is completing her dissertation on the nature of public good provision in rural Afghanistan where she spent more than one year conducting field research. Prior to graduate school, she worked in former-Soviet Central Asia for more than five years, primarily in Uzbekistan. She has worked for USAID, UNDP, as well as several non-governmental organizations throughout the region on issues related to democratization, local governance, and rule of law. Her research interests intersect the fields of law, politics, and economics.
Despite state weakness, a surprising amount
of public goods and services are provided at the community level
in rural Afghanistan , largely through "customary" or "traditional" organizations
such as maliks (village executives), jirgas or shuras (village
councils), and mullahs. Do these organizations hinder the "state
building" process? This talk will address the state of customary
organizations in post-2001 Afghanistan and how they interact
with a nationwide program designed to create new local governing
councils that also seek to provide public goods and services
to communities. This talk is based on analysis of quantitative
data sources as well as extensive field work across 32 villages
in six provinces throughout rural Afghanistan.
This lecture is co-sponsored by CREECA (Center for Russia, East
Europe and Central Asia)
October
2 -
Noon - 1:00PM
206 Ingraham Hall
"Museological Mahabharata: Visualizing the Vedic Past in the Epic Legends of Visvamitra"
Adheesh Sathaye
Assistant Professor, Department of Asian Studies
University of British Columbia
By way of analogy with the modern museum, this presentation will explore how the tangled web of stories embedded in the Sanskrit Mahabharata, the longest work of literature ever composed in the premodern world, is designed both to allow the epic's audiences to visualize the 'significant' past and to regulate--as much as possible--this public knowledge experience. In particular, we will examine the Mahabharata's 'exhibit' of Visvamitra, the legendary king who becomes a Vedic Brahmin, and how the structure and design of the epic itself controls how we are to make sense of his stunningly counter-normative achievements.
Dr. Adheesh Sathaye is Assistant Professor
in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British
Columbia. His areas of interest include the Sanskrit epics, drama,
and story literature, alongside issues of performance, textuality,
and literary culture.
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October
16 -
Noon - 1:00PM
206 Ingraham Hall
"Recent Excavations at Kanmer: A new look at the Harappan Settlements in Kutch, India"
Akinori Uesugi
Researcher, Research
Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN)
Kyoto, Japan
As a part of an interdisciplinary project entitled as ‘Environmental Change and the Indus Civilization’ by Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN), Kyoto, Japan, a series of excavations by a joint team of the Institute of Rajasthan Studies, JRN Rajasthan Vidyapeeth, Udaipur, the Gujarat State Department of Archaeology and RIHN has been conducted at a site of Kanmer which faces the Little Rann of Kachchh.
This site has an almost square plan and cultural
deposits in height from the surrounding area to the highest point
of the mound. The excavations has revealed five-fold cultural
sequences starting from pre-/Early Harappan period through Harappan
and Late Harappan periods to the Early Historic and Medial periods.
The Harappan and Late Harappan settlements are enclosed by massive
perimeter walls, inside which stone structures of each period
has been uncovered. The cultural sequence of this site is significant
in revealing the relations between the Harappan culture and the
local cultural traditions in this region.
In this presentation, the preliminary observations of the results of the excavation
will be presented.
Dr. Akinori Uesugi is a Researcher for the RIHN in Kyoto, Japan. He received
his PhD from Kansai University, Osaka, Japan in 2003 for his dissertation “Archaeology
of Urbanization in North India.” Dr. Uesugi has conducted many research excavations
including: Sravasti (Maheth) in Uttar Pradesh, Jomon site in Japan, and Buddhist
cave temples in Maharashtra. Several publications on his excavations have been
published as well. He is currently working on the Indus Project, which he began
work on in 2007.
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October
23 -
Noon - 1:00PM
206 Ingraham Hall
"Meditating Minds and Bodies in Space: Making Room for Ritual in Early Medieval Monasteries"
Dr. Tamara I. Sears
J. Paul Getty Postdoctoral Fellow, Yale University
The second half of the first millennium A.D. was a dynamic period that saw the rapid proliferation of new Saiva ascetic orders famed for their knowledge of yoga, japa, and specialized pujas. Because such rituals were believed to effect real internal transformations in the body of practitioners, the Gurus that headed these groups were widely sought after by disciples seeking to acquire magical powers or even the ontological status of living divinity. Whereas the nature of these internal transformations has been frequently studied by scholars, the extent to which the external, physical environment produced conditions conducive to realizing spiritual goals has rarely been assessed. This paper examines architecture’s role in the creation of ideal spaces for the performance and transmission of intensive rituals. By drawing key examples from newly surveyed Saiva monastic residences (mathas) dating between the 8th and 12th centuries, I suggest that ascetic orders took their architectural settings very seriously. They designed their dwellings in ways that could meet the ritual needs of the resident communities, and carefully planned complicated spatial programs that maximized the potential for spiritual attainment.
Tamara I. Sears is currently on leave as a
J. Paul Getty Postdoctoral Fellow. She taught at NYU for three
years, and will begin a new position as an Assistant Professor
in the department of the History of Art at Yale University in
the Fall of 2009. She is currently finishing a book on the political
and religious functions of Saiva monastic architecture, and she
has recently published essays in The Art Bulletin and South Asian
Studies.
November 6 - Noon - 1:00PM
206 Ingraham Hall
"Sites of Conflict: The Politics of Identity and Insurgency
in Post-colonial Northeast"
Suryasikha Pathak
State University of New York, College at Oswego, Oswego
Lecturer, Dept of History, Assam University, Silchar, Assam, India
Dr. Suryasikha Pathak was awarded both her Doctorate degree and M. Phil degree from the Centre for Historical Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University. She is currently employed as a Lecturer in the Department of History, Assam University, Silchar, Assam since October 2004. She also worked as a Research Associate in the Omeo Kumar Das Institute for Social Change and Development, Guwahati, for a project titled "Governance in Multi-Ethnic South and South East Asia: Experience of North East India, Myanmar and Malaysia" under the CINISEAS, for the period September, 2003 to February, 2004.
The region known as the Northeast India encompasses the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura. Though Sikkim has been now incorporated into the definition it is not a part of this talk. This is also a region, which shares international boundaries with China, Bhutan, Myanmar and Bangladesh, which also makes it a strategically important region for India. The seven states, or 'Seven Sisters' as they are popularly known, is home to at least thirty armed insurgent/militant organizations. The demands of these organizations are as varied as their ethnic composition and geographical location. While some militant group demand rights under the constitution or special status for the community they claim to represent, others have been leading movements for autonomy within the democratic structure of the Indian state, while others have agitated for separate state status within the region (for an ethnic group), and still others have been agitating for independence from India. Though it has been accepted that most of these movements are a fall-out of the developments or the lack of even development in post independent India, some of the movements have as long a history running parallel to the nation building process. All these organizations/ groups, old and new, have been perceived by the Indian state as a 'law and order situation' requiring military intervention and also constant negotiation for peace and conflict resolution. The civil society initiatives spearheaded demands for peace and also inquiry into instances of human rights violation by the state and the militant organizations. The region still grapples with these realities, which confronts its people and the plausible resolutions after endless peace accords and piecemeal solutions.
November
13 - Noon - 1:00PM
206 Ingraham Hall
"The Sufi Scene in Sri Lanka"
Dennis McGilvray
Associate Professor and Chair, Anthropology
University of Colorado
at Boulder.
He received his B.A. (1965) in Anthropology from Reed College, studied in the Social Relations Department at Harvard University (1965-66), and completed his Ph.D in cultural anthropology from the University of Chicago (1974). He previously taught at the University of Santa Clara (1972-73) and at Cambridge University (1973-78), and he was awarded a Mellon Fellowship at Cornell University (1978-80). His research and writing have focused upon the study of matrilineal kinship and marriage patterns, Hindu caste organization, cultural identity and inter-ethnic conflict, and the religious and ritual practices of Tamil-speaking Hindus and Muslims in the eastern coastal region of Sri Lanka. He recently led an interdisciplinary NSF research team to study the effects of cultural and regional identities on community recovery from the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka.
He has published scholarly articles and chapters on Sri Lankan Tamil and Muslim households and marriage, on Tamil concepts of gender and the body, and on the ethnic identity formation of Sri Lankan Tamils, Muslims, and Burghers (Eurasians). He has edited Caste Ideology and Interaction (Cambridge University Press 1982) as well as produced a traveling photo exhibit and accompanying book, Symbolic Heat: Gender, Health and Worship among the Tamils of South India and Sri Lanka (Ahmedabad: Mapin 1998). In 1987 he won the Stirling Award in psychological anthropology for his essay "Sex, Repression, and Sanskritization in Sri Lanka?" (Ethos 16, 1988). In 2007 he co-authored an East-West Center monograph with Mirak Raheem entitled Muslim Perspectives on the Sri Lankan Conflict. His newest book is Crucible of Conflict: Tamil and Muslim Society on the East Coast of Sri Lanka (Duke University Press 2008), the product of three decades of ethnographic research among the Tamils and “Moors” of Ampara and Batticaloa Districts.
Sufi traditions and devotional practices among Sri Lanka’s
8% Muslim population have continued, and possibly even grown
in popularity, in recent decades despite the opposition of Islamic
reform movements. This talk presents an overview of fieldwork
among Tamil-speaking Sufi Muslims in eastern Sri Lanka who also
have historic links with saintly tomb-shrines and centers of
Sufi teaching in Tamilnadu, Kerala, and Lakshadweep. The paradox
of anti-Sufi violence and pro-Sufi devotional activities will
be discussed in the context of the ongoing Sri Lankan ethnic
conflict and the December 2004 tsunami tragedy.
November
20 - Noon - 1:00PM
206 Ingraham Hall
"Uncovering the Great Secret:
Dara Shikuh, Hinduism and Politics in Mughal India"
Munis Faruqui
Assistant Professor, Department of South & Southeast Asian Studies, University
of California, Berkeley
Munis Faruqui teaches courses on Islam and the Muslim experience in South Asia. He is currently working on a monograph that focuses on the figure of the Mughal Prince to explore questions of state formation, imperial power, and dynastic decline in 16th and 17th Century South Asia. Recent and forthcoming publications include an examination of the creation of the Mughal Empire under Emperor Akbar; an investigation into the founding decades of the princely state of Hyderabad; and a study of the mystic and Mughal prince, Dara Shikoh. His other research interests include Islam's interaction with non-Muslim religious traditions, prosopographical approaches to studying Mughal history, and the development of Persianate cultural traditions in South Asia.
Called upon urgently, Sanskrit scholars congregated
in Banaras in 1656. They had been commissioned by Prince Dara
Shikuh to help translate the sacred Hindu text, the Upanishads,
into Persian. Working at a furious pace they completed their task
in a matter of six months. Dara Shikuh's introduction to the completed
translation has the quality of feverish excitement. After all,
the prince believed that he had uncovered the greatest secret
of all time: that the Upanishads are the fountainhead of religious
monotheism. So he titled this translation Sirr-i Akbar or "The
Great Secret". Within months of the completion of the translation,
however, the prince would find himself in a war of succession
against his brothers and two years later, following the accession
of Aurangzeb as the new Mughal emperor, he was executed. Not only
did Dara Shikuh fail to fill out his case for solving humanity's
greatest secret, but his audacious claim was also used against
him in accusations of apostasy.
December
4 - Noon - 1:00PM
206 Ingraham Hall
"Hari and Kumar go to HLS: The South Asian Graduate Experience at Harvard Law School"
Swethaa Ballakrishnen
Research Rellow with the Program on the Legal Profession and the East Asian Legal Studies Program, Harvard Law School
Visiting Researcher, UW-Madison
Swethaa Ballakrishnen is a 2004 graduate of the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (Hyderabad) and a 2008 graduate of Harvard Law School, where she did a Master of Laws (LL.M) with a shared focus in international finance and the sociology of legal education. Before studying at Harvard, she was a lawyer with the Mumbai offices of Amarchand Mangaldas and taught legal methods, family law and international finance at the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research, Hyderabad and the National Law Institute, Bhopal. Swethaa currently is a joint research fellow with the Program on the Legal Profession and the East Asian Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School (where she works on globalization of the Indian legal market) and a visiting researcher with Professor Marc Galanter at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
Who were the first South
Asian students at the country's oldest law school and why did
they travel beyond known English law schools to come to the
US? Why did more students from South Asia attend Harvard Law
School last year than ever before? And what does this mean
for the new South Asian Legal Education growth curve? In tracing the (first ever) South Asian law student history at Harvard Law School, Ms Ballakrishnen studies the numbers and the people to evaluate trends in admissions, interest and international relevance of Harvard’s
law programs.
The talk will deal in large part with the HLS Graduate
Program numbers (which, due to the availability of geographical
student data is easier to gauge) over the last century and discuss
interesting trends in the interest and attitudes of both students
and admissions committees at HLS. The premise comes from the argument
that student admissions at HLS, like most international graduate
study programs in law, started with (a) the early
exclusionary stage (1922-53) where international students were determinately
kept out for presumed lack of competency and applicability to the
programs (Griswold) to (b) the missionary
stage post WW2 (1953-80)
which saw an increase in the numbers of “special students” at HLS
from South Asian countries joining not legal programs, but specialized,
mid-career tax programs aimed at aiding development through education
to the current (c) international recognition
stage where HLS is
not only responding to the international interest in South Asia
but also recognizing the potential for scholarship with renewed
confidence.'
Although drawn from HLS numbers and students, the central focus of the talk is the new, symbiotic interest between South Asia and International legal education programs and the discussions will include the current legal education market, the globalized need of these new, elite law students and the fresh challenges that face Indian law school models.
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