5th Biennial Graduate Conference on South Asian Religions
Thursday, October 3 and Friday, October 4, 2019
The Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto is pleased to announce the 5th Biennial Graduate Conference on South Asian Religions (GCSAR). The GCSAR is an inherently interdisciplinary conference, facilitating critical and scholastically rigorous conversations across historical periods, geographies, methodologies, and subject matter. We are pleased to welcome Ayesha Irani, Assistant Professor of Asian Studies at University of Massachusetts-Boston, as our keynote for the conference.
The conference will take place at UTM on Thursday and at JHB on Friday.
Transportation will be provided from and back to JHB on Thursday. A light breakfast, lunch, and dinner will be provided to conference participants and attendees.
If you would like to be considered for transport to and back from UTM, please email nabeel.jafri@mail.utoronto.ca by Thursday, September 26th and specify whether it’s for the workshop, conference, or both.
Conference Schedule: Grad Conference—Oct 3 & 4
Thursday, October 3rd 2019
8:15-8:30 Meet at 170 St. George Street, University of Toronto
8:30-9:30 Travel to University of Toronto Mississauga
9:30-10:00 Breakfast, sign-in, conference materials
10:05-11:15 Early Career Panel
Chair: Nabeel Jafri
Respondent: Luther Obrock
– Kiran Singh (Toronto, Undergraduate) “Colonizing India: The Impact of Colonization on Hindus and Muslims”
– Aleesha Noreen (Toronto, Undergraduate) “The Historical Use of Indic Forms by Muslims for the Formation of Identity and the Conveyance of Authority”
– Ambika Sharma (Toronto, Undergraduate) “India’s National Pastime: A Look at Visual Culture and the Projection of Religious Nationalism in India.”
– Mayadevi Murthy (Toronto, Undergraduate) “Tamil Identity Through Tamil Devotion in Thiruvilayadal”
– Amanda Ng (Toronto, Undergraduate) “The Complicity, Comfort, and Coerciveness of Karma for Thai Buddhist Women”
PANEL 1: 11:20-1:15
Title: Colonial Genres of Religion
Chair: Janani Comar
Respondent: Tony Stewart
– Sujata Chaudhary (McGill, PhD) “Private versus Public Temples in India: The complexities of Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Act of 1863”
– Rohit Dutta Roy (Cambridge, PhD) “Reconciling the Theologian and the Historian through the works of Sivanath Sastri: Analyzing the model of Ecclesiastical Histories in Early Twentieth Century India”
– Lori Noel (Concordia, MA) “Exhibiting the Sacred: The Museum and Temple Identities of Religious Objects” Material culture
– Sahaj Patel (Vanderbilt, PhD) ‘“Refiguring Mantra: Meaning Making in the Early Swaminarayan Community”
Lunch: 1:15-2:15
PANEL 2: 2:15-3:45
Title: Early Modern Texts
Chair: Annie Heckman
Respondent: Ajay Rao
– Rohini Shukla (Columbia, PhD) “When Krishna Writes Janī’s Songs: Gendered Authorship in Early Modern Maharashtra”
– Anusha Rao (Toronto, PhD) “Madhva’s Draupadī: Deification and The Question of Qualification in Madhva’s Theology”
– Anna Lee White (McGill, PhD) “Rāmānand’s Sanskrit Texts and Debates on Social Reform”
PANEL 3: 3:45-5:15
Title: Anthropology of South Asian Religions
Chair: Stephanie Duclos-King
Respondent: Frank Korom
– Kalpesh Bhatt (Toronto, PhD) “Theistic Hope in Everyday Precarity: Secular Apprehensions in the BAPS Swaminarayan Hindu Tradition”
– Helena Reddington (McGill, PhD) “Eighteenth Century Satire for a Twenty-First Century Audience: The Tuḷḷal Performance Tradition in Contemporary Kerala”
– Nimisha Thakur (Syracuse, PhD) “River Song: Intersections of Caste, Gender, Indigeneity and Relational Citizenship in the Brahmaputra River Valley, Assam”
5:15 Travel to dinner place
6:00 Dinner
8:00 Travel back to University of Toronto St. George
Friday, October 4th, 2019
8:30 Meet at 170 St. George Street, University of Toronto
8:30-9:00 Breakfast (Room 317)
PANEL 4: 9:05-11:00
Title: Pre-Modern Texts and their Afterlives
Chair: Jesse Pruitt
Respondent: Srilata Raman
– Heleen De Jonckheere (Ghent, PhD) “Laugh and Learn: Humor at the center of a Jain didactic narrative”
– Mirela Stosic (Toronto, PhD) “Caste Representations of Alvars”
– Jason Smith (Harvard, ThD) “Model Readers: Ethics, Audience, and the Tirukkuṟaḷ”
– David Monteserin Narayana (Yale, MA) “Of pots and skies: on the study of conceptual metaphors in Indian thought”
Coffee Break 11:00-11:15
PANEL 5: 11:15-1:05
Title: Sikhism: Body, Text and Memory
Chair: Jonathan Peterson
Respondent: Julie Vig
– Brittany Puller (Michigan, PhD) “Reimagining the ‘Archive:’ State History as Sikh History”
– Sukhbinder Singh Sandhu (Leeds, MA) “The Digital Guru: How does Digitalised Gurbani Affect the Religious Practices of Sikhs?”
– Damanjit Singh Gill (UPenn, MA) “Paintra: The Mobilization of Bodies through Gatka in the Late 19th Century”
– Manvinder Gill (McMaster, MA) “For the Culture: Culture, Masculinity, and the intergenerational persistence of problem drinking in Sikh-Canadians”
Lunch 1:05-2:05
PANEL 6: 2:05-3:35
Title: New Voices in Newar Studies
Chair: Krissy Rogahn
Respondent: Christoph Emmrich
– Ian Turner (Toronto, PhD) “Facebook Farmers and Urban Entrepreneurs: Politics of the Sacred in the Place-Making and Place-Claiming of the Kathmandu Valley”
– Andrea Wollein (Toronto, PhD) ” Provincializing Mesocosm: Buddhism in Bhaktapur ”
– Austin Simoes-Gomes (Toronto, PhD) “Decentering the Shaman: An Exploration of the Role of the Audience in Newar Healing Rituals”
Coffee Break 3:35-3:45
PANEL 7: 3:45-5:15
Title: Encountering Rāma: The Path of the Divine
Chair: Anusha Rao
Respondent: Arti Dhand
– Tamara Cohen (Toronto, PhD) “Rāma’s Virtue”
– Tarinee Awasthi (Cornell, PhD) “The Quest of(for) Rāma: Adhyatma-Rāmāyaṇa and the Rāmcaritmānas of Gosvāmī Tulsidās”
– Aditya Chaturvedi (Emory, PhD) “Path ‘of/to’ Rama : Mithila Rameśvaracarita and Tantra Caryā”
Concluding Remarks 5:15-5:30
Keynote by Dr. Ayesha Irani 5:30-6:45PM
“Making Religious History: Lessons from Bangladesh and Islamic Bengal”
This presentation explores how Persianate historical writing and experiences with Sufi communities in Bangladesh invite reflection upon the manifold ways in which religious history is made and remade with the establishment of Islam in new communities. What roles do Sufis and their saintly dead play in reiterating or remaking history? Can poets renew prophecy? Can they “refresh the shari‘ah”? And what roles do translators play in renewing sacred history? What do their representations of the past tell us about religious people’s aspirations for their community? In exploring these questions, this lecture elucidates ways in which social actors marshal the memory of the past not only to make it relevant to the present, but to create what they consider to be a better future for self and community.
Dinner: 6:45-8:30
