February
7 -
7:30 PM - 9:00 PM
206 Ingraham Hall
Ritty Lukose,
Ph.D. Anthropology, University of Chicago
http://www.gse.upenn.edu/faculty/lukose.html
February
14 -
Noon - 1 PM
206 Ingraham Hall
Mary Jane
Mossman
Telling the Story of Cornelia Sorabji:Connecting
Law and Gender www.osgoode.yorku.ca/faculty/Mossman_Mary_Jane.html
February
21 -
Noon - 1 PM
206 Ingraham Hall
"Evolution of Communications
Policy and Regulation in India"
Vikram Raghavan
Vikram Raghavan's presentation will trace the regulation of communications in India
beginning with the East India Company's decision in 1854 to create a
monopolistic telegraph network. He will highlight major statutory and policy
developments before and after India's independence in 1947 emphasizing the
post-1991 economic reforms. Those reforms transformed India's communications
landscape and created huge, new markets for telecom, broadcasting, and Internet
services. Vikram will also focus on the existing regulatory and policy
framework that has helped established India as the fastest growing telecom
market in the world.
Raghavan
Biography
www.lawandotherthings.blogspot.com
February
28 - Noon - 1 PM
206 Ingraham Hall
"The
Body, Sex and the Democratization of Transparency: Rethinking
Religion and Globalization through the Sathya Sai Movement "
Tulasi Srinivas,
Emerson College
In many religions the relationship between the body,
sexuality and the spirit is contentious. I examine this complex
relationship with reference to the little known yet highly successful,
transnational, civil, Indic (Hindu- Islamic) Sathya Sai Movement
that emerges out of India. The data suggests that the Sai religious self
is re-constructed towards salvation through a set of cognitive, corporeal,
seemingly Foucauldian inspired disciplinary tactics that are
reinvented from traditional Hindu and Islamic sattvic (ascetic) experience.
These disciplines construct a ‘legible body’ that in turn provides the
grammar for the larger symbolic world of global Sai devotion. However,
there are two recognized disputing parties over the meaning of this legible
body and the level of compliance required --the global Sai Organization
and the anti- Sai network—who I
argue, engage differing yet similar “strategies of silence” when discussing
the body and sex. This paper examines these strategies of silence
that, I suggest, allow for and engage a vital “ambiguity” that is in seeming
contrast to the “rhetoric of transparency” that all global institutions
are presumed to adhere to. Using one example of a dispute, I
reflect on the politics of knowledge and belief that shapes conceptions
of embodied devotion and desire, through an analysis of the transnational
Sathya Sai Movement’s conception of somatic experiences, and the varying
emotional and moral values inherent in, and assigned to, these
conceptions. I set them against the larger question; the nature of ambiguity
in cultural translation, and the problems and paradoxes that a liberal
project of religion faces in a rapidly globalizing world.
March
10 - Noon
Lubar Commons (7200 Law)
"Children's Right to Privacy under International
Law "
Dr. Charika Marasinghe
March
27 -
Noon - 1PM
105 Ingraham Hall
"Law as the Theology of Ordinary Life:
Lessons from Hindu Law "
Professor
Donald R. Davis, Jr.
The prevailing modern vision of law as secular, instrumental, and
positive is a chimera produced in and by European and American
nation-states and their courts over the last two centuries. The broader
history of law in other times and places reveals notions and practices
of law that challenge accepted 'truths' about law's reach and role in
human life. In this presentation, a case is made that law everywhere
may be profitably seen as the theology of ordinary life. At every
level, the laws by which we lead our lives encode assumptions and ideas
about what we aspire to as human beings and what we presume about
ourselves and others, especially aspects of things near to us such as
family, birth, death, sex, money, marriage, and work. Texts of the
Hindu law tradition provide the inspiration and the evidence for the
presentation, and the lessons learned from Hindu legal texts will serve
to begin a new kind of conversation about law and the humanities.
April
3 -
Noon - 1PM
206 Ingraham Hall
"Peace Process in Nepal and elections
for constituent assembly (April 10, 2008) "
Prakash
Raj
A Maoist insurgency, similar to the Shining Path in Peru has brought
profound changes in the Hindu kingdom of Nepal. The country was declared
to be a "secular state" after Popular Movement in April 2006 which
forced King Gyanendra to restore Parliament dissolved in 2002 . The
Government formed under the leadership of Prime Minister Koirala signed
a Comprehensive Peace Agreement with the Maoists and the United Nations
was invited for monitoring both the Nepalese and the Maoist armies.
Elections for constituent assembly are planned to be held on April 10th.
Nepal may soon become a republic as the monarchy is now in
"suspension". Such neighbouring countries as India and China have
watched developments in Nepal with keen interest as has the United
States which has not taken the Maoists off terrorist list.
Raj was educated in India and the United States. He worked for the UN for
five years as staff member and as consultant to UNDP, ILO and the World
Bank. He has written several books including Kay Aardeko- The Royal
Massacre in Nepal (Rupa, Delhi, 2001), Maoists in the land of Buddha
(Nirala, Delhi, 2004), Dancing Democracy (Rupa, Delhi, 2006 and Crisis
of Identity in Nepal (Pilgrim, Varanasi, 2007). He is also author of
several editions of Lonely Planet's guide to Nepal and co-author of
Lonely Planet's India.
April
10 - Noon - 1PM
206 Ingraham Hall
"The Future of Democracy in Pakistan "
Akbar Zaidi
Often called a failed state, overwhelmingly Muslim, ruled for the most part by the military, a country with nuclear weapons, actively involved in the war on terrorism, Pakistan is a site which offers complex, complicated and conflicting scope and possibility, both as theory and as example, of how numerous factors determine political and economic futures. The recent impartial and free elections, a rare occurrence, offer yet new possibilities, building on its history and structural and institutional determinants. This lecture will examine the possibilities that emerge from these elections and what they mean for Pakistan, South Asia and the US.
S. Akbar Zaidi is a Karachi-based social scientist who specializes
in the field of political economy. He taught at Karachi University
for nearly fifteen years and continues to lecture at Universities
in Pakistan and abroad. Most recently (2004-05) he was a Visiting
Professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at
Johns Hopkins University. He conducts research and has published
twelve books. He has published in numerous international professional
journals on themes as diverse as devolution, health sociology,
local government, fiscal policy, and international financial
institutions.
April
24 - Noon - 1PM
206 Ingraham Hall
"Pakistan - Moving Forwards or Backwards? "
Dr. Ayesha
Siddiqa
Pakistan is euphoric after the general elections held on February 2008. The people sent a message to President Musharraf that he is no longer needed. But have the tables really turned on him? And is this the beginning of a change in Pakistan's politics?
Dr Ayesha Siddiqa is currently a visiting professor at the South Asia Studies department, University of Pennsylvania. She has a Ph.D. in war Studies from King's College, London and is author of two books: (a) Pakistan's Arms Procurement and Military Buildup, 1979-99 In Search of a Policy and (b) Military Inc, Inside Pakistan's Military Economy. She is a Woodrow Wilson and Ford Fellow. She is a columnist for Pakistan's leading English daily, Dawn and has contributed articles in international journals.
May
1 - Noon - 1PM
206 Ingraham Hall
"Encompassing the biomedical body: Translation,
temporality, and the universalization of the plural bodies
of Ayurveda"
Matthew
Wolfgram
This paper draws on ethnographic and historical
evidence to account for the transformation of the theory of
the body in the Ayurveda system of medicine from a complex
of porous, dynamic, contingent, and multiplex bodies to a unified
and universal body that encompasses the anatomical and physiological
knowledge of Cosmopolitan medicine. Ayurveda apologists have
at various points in late colonial and postcolonial India used
translation as a means of encompassing this body and of projecting
it back upon Indian history. Such encompassments make it seem
as if Ayurveda has already anticipated or conceived and lost
that which it is incorporating, an effect which apologists
ideologize as a sign of the superior scientific parsimony and
completeness of their system. I call this particular ideology
of translation "salvage translation," which I argue was used
to organize the Ayurvedic conception of time and history around
projects to “modernize” the science. I will demonstrate
this cultural-linguistic and historical process as it occurred
in the context of the modernization of medical education at
the Trivandrum Ayurveda College. Matthew Wolfgram is a linguistic
and medical anthropologist from the University of Michigan
who is completing his dissertation titled “Translating
into Modernity: Between the Languages of Ayurveda.” He
currently lectures in the UW Department of Anthropology and
conducts research on classroom discourse at the Wisconsin Center
for Educational Research.
top
of page
