[Soasiastudents] October 26: Forum for South Asian Studies Discussion

[Madhavi Murty]

Dear South Asianists,

I want to start by apologising profusely for this last minute announcement.

Many of you attended the sessions organized under the banner of the 'Forum for South Asian Studies' last year. Sharmistha Ghosh and I are planning to continue the work that this collective started last year.

We would like the Forum to be a space where both graduate students and members of the UW community interested in and working on issues relevant to South Asia could come together to initiate conversations, develop interests and work out some ideas. We would like the Forum to be a space where we could discuss contemporary politics, popular culture and the arts. We hope that these discussions are animated by each of our academic interests, experience and political/activist work.

Again, I apologize for this last minute e-mail, but we hope that many of you can join us for the first meeting of the Forum tomorrow (Friday), October 26. As you know the Urban Studies group will be meeting tomorrow at Thomson 403, 3.30 pm, we are hoping to make an easy transition following this meeting.

So, please come to the urban studies group meeting and stay a little longer for the South Asia Forum.

We wanted to keep the agenda for the first meeting broad, so, that we could all discuss what form the Forum could take over the course of the year. Here are a couple of issues we could discuss tomorrow:

1) A discussion of Nandini Sundar's talk last week: What were the take-away points from the talk? How was she defining the state, 'private' players? How could one formulate a critique of her argument? What is the role of a public scholar - how useful is it to draw a distinction between an 'academic' talk and a 'political/activist' talk?

2) We also thought it might be interesting to discuss the emergence of Mayawati as a political icon: How is politics gendered in postcolonial India? How do caste and gender intersect in the representations of Mayawati? Is dalit politics undergoing a new transformation? Here are a few media stories on Mayawati that you could peruse, if you had a little time.

The first link is a BBC profile of Mayawati after she won the state assembly elections by a simply majority. The second and third stories were written just prior to her electoral victory. The second link is an interview with Mayawati.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1958378.stm

http://www.hinduonnet.com/2006/04/12/stories/2006041206071100.htm

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main29.asp?filename=Ne280407Behenjis_brahmin_SP.asp

Again, apologies for the last minute nature of this e-mail, as well as for its length. We hope to see many of you tomorrow at 3.30 pm in Thomson 403, first for the urban studies group and later for the South Asia Forum.

Madhavi


Madhavi Murty,
PhD Student and TA,
Dept of Communication,
University of Washington.
madhavi at u.washington.edu