International Seminar on The First World War: The Indian Context -St Aloysius College (Autonomous) Mangalore, India 5th-6th January 2018

Department of History

St Aloysius College (Autonomous)

Mangalore- 575003, Karnataka, India

The St Aloysius College plans to organize an international seminar on the theme The First World War: the Indian Context The College invites scholars in Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences and in related fields to participate in the Seminar.

The Theme and the Context

It is 100 years since the First World War took place. As all of us know, though the Great War was the result of complex political developments of Europe, it had large influence on Indian society, economy and political life. It was mainly due to the fact that India was a colony of the British. The British too wanted the cooperation of Indians. Mahatma Gandhi who had returned to India after his African sojourn during the war had encouraged Indians to join the British forces.

Indians had immensely contributed to the British war efforts in the form of men and ammunitions as well as financial resources. The Princely states in India were often compulsorily made to contribute to the war efforts. Leaders of numerous communities and groups in India were made to lead the fund raising programmes such as collection of clothes and other materials which were sent to the war front.

Politically, India made a few gains after the war came to an end such as the Act of 1919, which gave a few concessions to the Indians in their long and bumpy road to self-determination.

The Department of History of St. Aloysius College Mangalore intends to study and document the entire history, literature and the accompanying trauma Indians faced during the war. A large amount of literature must be available on the topic as well as those times which must be lying unattended by the scholars in various libraries and archives and even in contemporary newspapers and journals. 

We propose to hold an international seminar on the subject involving scholars from Europe, USA and India. We will be making all efforts to publish the papers presented in the seminar after due review by reputed publishing house.

We request the academic community and Research Scholars to go through such a literature (it may be even in the form of books, folk literature, songs and so on.) and make a study and present them in the seminar.

Scholars from the following Universities will be delivering special lectures:

State University of New York (SUNY) Cortland, USA

University of Namur, Belgium

Important information:

Those intending to present papers can contact the Chief Coordinator at the earliest. They can also send their papers before 30th November 2017(along with an abstract). The contact details are given below.

International and invited scholars will be offered an honorarium. 

A detailed brochure with sub-themes would be sent to those who are participating and presenting the papers. It will be our pleasure to welcome you at St Aloysius College (Autonomous) campus at Mangalore on 5th -6th January 2018.

For further details, kindly contact: 

Chief Coordinator-

Dr Vishanz Pinto,

Dean, Faculty of Arts,

St Aloysius College (Autonomous), Mangalore-575003,

Karnataka, India

Phone: + 91 9480289560

Email: vishanzpinto@yahoo.com

Contact Email: vishanzpinto@yahoo.com

CFP: "Social Movements and Resistance", Critiquing Culture Conference- George Mason University-October 7th 2017

Event: Saturday, October 7th 2017 at George Mason University

Submission Deadline: July 1, 2017

Event and Theme:

The Cultural Studies Student Organizing Committee (SOC) at George Mason University invites paper proposals for our 11t​ h annual Cultural Studies Graduate Student Conference. 

The theme of this year’s conference of “Social Movements and Resistance” reflects the particularly potent political moment in which we are currently situated. To that end, we strongly encourage submissions that address, critique, or otherwise analyze contemporary and historical developments of, and responses to, activism and political uncertainty.

This year’s conference will feature a plenary panel addressing contemporary sites of social justice and activism, with details and a final list of speakers to be released closer to the event date. 

The Cultural Studies Program and Conference: 

The Cultural Studies program at George Mason University is committed to the analysis and critique of culture. Cultural Studies examines cultural objects as products of the wider social, historical, economic and political conditions. Thus its interests lay both in understanding processes of cultural production as well as discovering the effects of culture at sites of reception. In particular, Cultural Studies focuses on power relations and inequalities, which shape the horizon of possibilities for any cultural object at hand, be it a political discourse, an economic model, or a mass cultural product. Towards this project, we recognize the value of a range of critical approaches including Marxist political economy, poststructuralism, feminism, critical theory and postcolonial studies. While the objects of Cultural Studies vary widely, the field aims at political relevance and efficacy.

In an attempt to broaden the community of scholars working in precisely this interdisciplinary vein, the Cultural Studies Student Organizing Committee at GMU invites graduate students to submit research papers for a conference specifically oriented toward the examination of cultural objects, through a variety of critical lenses. 

We encourage the submission of papers related to the following broad themes:

• Political Economy
• Mass & Popular Culture
• Gender & Sexuality
• Race & Ethnicity
• Visual Culture 

Abstracts of no more than 300 words and a current CV should be sent to critiquing.culture@gmail.com by July 1st, 2017. 

Please include presentation title, presenter's name, institutional affiliation, contact information, 

A/V requests, and any special needs required in the email. 

Abstracts should be sent as .doc or .rtf file attachments. 

Contact Info: 

Kayla Keener

Natasha Sharma

Co-Chairs

Contact Email: critiquing.culture@gmail.com

URL: http://www.culturalstudies.gmu.edu/current-students/soc

CFP- Second NA’AMAT USA Research Fellowship in Honor of Elizabeth J. Raider.

Call For Proposals:

NA’AMAT USA is pleased to invite proposals for the Second NA’AMAT USA Research Fellowship in Honor of Elizabeth J. Raider. A lifelong member of NA’AMAT USA, Ms. Raider is the organization’s immediate past national president. The fellowship was inaugurated in 2015-16 and previously awarded to Dr. Pnina Lahav (Boston University) for her work on “The Political Leadership of Golda Meir: Pioneer Women and the Campaign for Jewish Statehood.”

Eligibility:

The 2017-18 theme of the fellowship program is “Jewish Women’s Contributions to Israeli Society.” Scholars from all academic disciplines working on Jewish women’s activism, critical engagement, and/or leadership in varied arenas including art, medicine, culture, history, education, politics, etc. are encouraged to apply. 

The fellowship carries an honorarium of $2500.

Applicants must propose a serious research plan that will result in one of the following: 

(a) chapter and/or substantial part of a Master’s thesis or doctoral dissertation,            or 

(b) a scholarly study of publishable quality. 

The fellowship recipient must commit to delivering one public lecture based on his/her research, submit a completed draft of his/her scholarly study, and provide a version of his/her work to be adapted for a popular audience and published on the NA’AMAT USA website and/or in the magazine NA’AMAT Woman.

How to Apply

To apply, submit a cover letter with a research plan, a current CV, and two letters of support, preferably from academic colleagues. In the case of graduate and doctoral students, one of the two letters must be from the thesis/dissertation advisor. Preference will be given to applicants who are ABD and early career scholars.

The fellowship committee members are Dr. Karla Goldman (University of Michigan), Dr. Daniel Greene (Northwestern University), Dr. Shirley Idelson (Independent Scholar), Dr. Laura Levitt (Temple University), and Dr. Mark A. Raider (University of Cincinnati). The deadline for applications is July 31, 2017. An announcement about the award will be made in August 2017. All application materials should be sent electronically in the pdf format to: Prof. Mark A. Raider (raiderma@uc.edu), NA’AMAT USA Research Fellowship Committee Chair, c/o History Department, University of Cincinnati.

ABOUT NA’AMAT USA.

 The Zionist women’s organization NA’AMAT USA, the sister movement of Na’amat Israel, is dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for women, children, and families in Israel, the U.S., and around the world. Founded in 1925, NA’AMAT USA (originally named Pioneer Women) has a rich and storied history. Over the course many decades, it has been instrumental in helping to create, build, and sustain the State of Israel.

DEADLINE EXTENDED TO JULY 31, 2017

Contact Info: 

Prof. Mark A. Raider, History Department, University of Cincinnati

Contact Email: raiderma@uc.edu

URL: https://naamat.org/

International Conference(With Travel Grant) -Harnessing Digital Technologies to Advance the Study of the Non-Western World by Digital Humanities Asia-April 26-29, 2018 Stanford University

Call for Proposals: 

Over the past decade, a powerful new suite of spatial, textual, and social network analysis tools – broadly understood as the Digital Humanities – has begun to reshape the methods that we as Humanists and Social Scientists bring to bear on our questions, and indeed the very questions we ask. Looking out over the terrain of Digital Humanities (DH) initiatives, the vista is a marvelous and dynamically changing one. At Stanford University alone, one can point to award-winning programs such as the Mapping the Republic of Letters project, myriad initiatives based at the Stanford Literary Lab, the Kindred Britain project, and the ORBIS Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World, to cite only a handful of examples. When we extend our view across the United States and worldwide, the roster of DH initiatives becomes ever more compelling and exciting.

At the same time, an impartial view of Digital Humanities scholarship in the present day reveals a stark divide between “the West and the rest.” With notable exceptions, such as the Markus platform, CText, the China Biographical Database Project, the Digital Islamic Humanities Project, and others, far fewer large-scale DH initiatives have focused on Asia and the Non-Western world than on Western Europe and the Americas.

This divide runs very deep, and is not primarily a question of scholarly interest or orientation. The “Asia deficit” within Digital Humanities is in no small part the outcome of more entrenched divides within the platforms and digital tools that form the foundation of DH itself. Digital databases and text corpora – the “raw material” of text mining and computational text analysis – are far more abundant for English and other Latin alphabetic scripts than they are for Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Sanskrit, Hindi, Arabic, and other Non-Latin orthographies. This deficit, in turn, derives in large part from the widespread unavailability of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) platforms, text parsers, and tokenizers capable of handling and processing Non-Latin scripts – not in any way due to the paucity of primary source materials. As a result, when we look at DH in Western Europe and the Americas, we find a vibrant intellectual environment in which even college and university undergraduates – let alone more advanced researchers – can download off-the-shelf analytical platforms and data corpora, and venture into new and cutting-edge research questions; while, in the context of Asian Studies, we find an environment in which many of the most basic elements of DH research remain underdeveloped or non-existent.

Objective: 

The objective of this multi-day conference is to advance a new era in Non-Western Digital Humanities by bringing together leading and emerging scholars of East, South, Southeast, and Inner-Central Asia working in the Humanities, Social Sciences, Computer Science, Applied Mathematics, and Engineering.

With support from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, and multiple departments, centers, and divisions at Stanford University, the conference will focus on four (4) areas of research that represent both the core of DH as a whole, as well as areas in which Asian Studies scholars have been underserved and under-resourced:

 (1) the Spatial Analysis of Asian Human Geographies, 

(2) Text Mining and Computational Analysis of Asian & Non-Latin Scripts,

(3) Network Analysis of Non-Western social formations, and 

(4) the development of Digital Humanities tools and platforms designed for the unique challenges of Asian Studies scholarship.

DHAsia is seeking paper proposals for its 2018 Summit Meeting focused on East, South, Southeast, and Inner/Central Asia.

DATES & LOCATION

The DHAsia 2018 conference will take place April 26-28, 2018 on the campus of Stanford University.

ELIGIBILITY

Scholars working on Asia, in all disciplines and time periods, are welcome to apply. We are particularly eager to identify early-career candidates, ranging from the advanced PhD level (post-comprehensive/oral examination) through Assistant Professor rank or equivalent. All ranks are eligible and encouraged to apply, however.

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS

Confirmed Speakers during this 2018 DHAsia Summit Meeting include:

- A. Sean Pue, Michigan State University

- Anatoly Detwyler, Penn State University

- Elias Muhanna, Brown University

- Hilde De Weerdt, Leiden University

- Hoyt Long, University of Chicago

- Javier Cha, Leiden University

- Liu Chao-Lin, National Chengzhi University

- Matthew Thomas Miller, University of Maryland

- Michael Stanley-Baker, Max Planck

- Paul Vierthaler, Leiden University

- Ruth Mostern, University of Pittsburgh

- Tina Lu, Yale University

APPLICATION & DEADLINE

The deadline for applications is July 15, 2017.

 Materials should be submitted via email/attachments to Tom Mullaney (tsmullaney@stanford.edu) with the subject header “DHASIA 2018 APPLICATION.” (This subject header is REQUIRED.)

Applications should include:

I. Cover letter summarizing field of study, research, and Digital Humanities experience

II. Title, 250-word Abstract of Proposed Conference Paper

III. CV (3-page)

IV. Two references including contact information (please do NOT request or provide letters of recommendation – but references may be contacted as part of application review process)

FINANCIAL SUPPORT

A limited number of travel stipends will be offered to help offset cost of travel to Stanford.

The Sahapedia - UNESCO Fellowships 2017

About the Fellowship

To provide enthusiasts, students and scholars an opportunity to engage with cultural heritage and follow their pursuit of the knowledge systems of India, Sahapedia is pleased to announce its Fellowship programme.

“Saha”, Sanskrit for “together with”, is an invitation to explore together the richness of our cultural landscapes. The Sahapedia – UNESCO Fellowship programme is an extension of this invitation to engage with the rich and diverse range of arts, heritages and cultures of India.

UNESCO’s Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage 2003 (referred to as UNESCO 2003 Convention hereafter), refers to “importance of the intangible cultural heritage as a mainspring of cultural diversity and a guarantee of sustainable development.” The Sahapedia - UNESCO Fellowships are a part of the efforts to raise -- at local, national, and international levels -- awareness of the importance of intangible heritage, and accessibility of the same to communities, groups and individuals. The content documented and curated as a part of this fellowship programme is expected to fulfill, in part, the aims and objectives of the UNESCO 2003 Convention.

Through this initiative, Fellows will be encouraged to carry out documentation and critical research in diverse areas of cultural knowledge, while interacting with and enhancing networks that contribute to the creation of the same. This research of the Fellows will be published on the Sahapedia web portal, contributing to the online resource.

The Fellowship programme offers two variants currently – the Sahapedia Project Fellowship and the Sahapedia Research Fellowship. This gives the applicant the option of participating either at the level of primary documentation or of the content curation process.

Deliverables

Sahapedia Project Fellow (SPF):

• The Project Fellow shall coordinate the contribution of different kinds of multimedia content revolving around a particular theme.

• The module to be created on the theme could be in the format of one core article, a couple of allied articles, an image gallery and/or video recording, interviews and quick facts, for instance. *

• The project taken up is expected to be fulfilled in the period of 12 weeks.

Sahapedia Research Fellow (SRF): 

• The Research Fellow position is meant for both academic engagement and primary field-work and documentation. The Research Fellow shall submit a minimum of three or four elements surrounding one or multiple topics.

• The deliverables for scholars and field-workers could involve, for instance, interviews with other scholars or practitioners, review of scholarship, interview discussing key issues of the topic, overview or introductory material or primary multimedia documentation on the topic. *

• Students and young researchers could potentially work on the documentation process (through field photos/videos, plans, sketches, and the like), transcription and translation of interviews, and/or compilation of quick facts (like filmographies, compositions, choreographies, etc.). *

• The tasks taken up are ideally to be completed in the period of 8 weeks.

A 400-word proposal has to be submitted during the time of application with details of the work the applicant aims to carry out and relevance of this work to Sahapedia, and a tentative list of deliverables specific to the assignment in question. Young scholars and researchers may enlist the guidance of teachers, professors or mentors, in this application, if required. The exact deliverables shall be discussed and fixed for each Fellow based on this proposal, on their being shortlisted.

*For pointers, find a list of links to different kinds of content on Sahapedia (Annexure – 1) and a note of ways to use the Representative List and Urgent Safeguarding List of the UNESCO 2003 Convention (Annexure – 2). We hope these will act as starting points for applicants to conceptualise their contribution to Sahapedia.

Eligibility

The Fellowship is available to post-doctoral scholars, doctoral candidates, post-graduates, and graduates (including those students due to graduate in the summer of 2017). It is expected that the area or domain being applied for by an applicant is their area of expertise, or that this area has been the focus of one of their pursuits. Fellows are free to work jobs or engage in professional or academic work, as long as they find sufficient time to finish the projects taken up as a part of the Sahapedia Fellowship.

Duration

The project taken up by the Fellow is expected to be completed in the time-frame of twelve weeks for the SPF and of eight weeks for the SRF.

Funding

The SPF shall be granted an award of Rs. 40,000 and the SRF an award of Rs. 15,000. Once the deliverables have been fixed for individual Fellows, a detailed plan is to be drafted for submission, including an expenditure plan. The first installment (20%) of the award will be paid after the approval of the plan. The subsequent installments shall be paid on completion of specific elements in the assignment plan.

Benefits

Through this programme, Fellows shall receive an opportunity to work and conduct research in their area of interest, while receiving access to networks of scholars and professionals in the heritage sector. Their work will be made visible on the Sahapedia portal, making it accessible to wider audiences.

Application Guidelines

The following materials are to be submitted as a part of the application:

1. Resume or curriculum vitae;

2. A proposal of not more than 400 words; **

3. A writing sample (previously written essay).

Please find attached the terms and conditions, providing details of the contractual agreement (Annexure - 3), and a time-line of the process (Annexure -4) for your benefit.

**If the resources provided by Sahapedia are to be utilized for work already in progress, a note explaining this work with a brief description of how this will be developed into publishable material should be provided.

Contact

Application Closes on 15th July 2017.

The documents listed above should either be emailed to: fellowships@sahapedia.org

Or sent to:

Sahapedia

C-1/3, First Floor,

SDA (Safdarjung Development Area)

New Delhi – 110016.

For queries, write to fellowships@sahapedia.org or contact +918826622261.

OR Visit :

https://www.sahapedia.org/sahapedia-unesco-fellowships-2017?utm_source=sendinblue&utm_campaign=Sahapedia__UNESCO_Fellowships_2017&utm_medium=email

International Conference on WOMEN & SECTARIAN VIOLENCE IN SOUTH ASIA: FICTION & REALITY 9-10 Nov, 2017, Central University of Gujarat, India

Centre for English Studies

School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies

Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar 

Concept Note

The conference aims to enquire how South Asian women, situationally, moving beyond the traditional notions of motherhood, family and ‘womanhood’, creates a trail of some yet unexplored trait. Is she trying to re-create the notion of ‘woman’ in her ‘context of situation’, region and gender? Has there been an insistent  attempt to re-contextualize herself?

The South Asian region has been witness to many-layered  onflicts: be it the Partition, the Sikh and other riots in India; the historical trajectory of violence in Afghanistan;, the ethnic violence in Sri Lanka; or the minority conflicts in Pakistan,, women have been the carnage, the sub-stratum through which Patriarchy has waged war. She has been torn, ravaged, mutilated, humiliated, and burnt. There is nothing more that she can fear or encounter. There is nothing more that she can remember to forget. She is inscribed by a violent earth, colonized by man, culture, religion, caste, ethics and morality. The historical and social/cultural terrain has had its role to play in the enormity perpetuated. There is a need to re-visit this territory and engage with it critically. One needs to ask whether ‘Literature’ has captured all this. Do writers remember to forget? Can one write to make our countries remember? Do we forget to remember? Nevertheless, the psychological dimension is something that one cannot afford to forget. 

In an area where censors, bans, riots and sectarian violence have historically been a part and parcel of everyday life, South Asian women have inspired the world by living through the trauma. Her body has become a contested site and the possibility of an imaginary is not yet born. Her ‘values’ are eroded on the streets and in the psyche, yet she has not given up.In the face of interminable violence, she is ‘abducted’, ‘returned’ and ‘recovered’. She traverses through this terrain, through tears, through fights, and perhaps through the yearning that one day, there might be light on the horizon. 

This conference is an attempt to re-discover this ‘traversing’, an attempt to understand her myriad moods and pathways, not roles. To dissolve, devour and evaporate the vicious circle that she is enmeshed in. The search stretches in as well as out, into the interiors of the mind and the land called South Asia. The aim is not to encase and embalm women in strict compartments, nor to stick to a particular genre, but to break boundaries and borders. An exercise to translate, transcreate and transliterate. It is also a calling out to women who have not been heard or published, women who cannot write, but who can only reproduce narratives. These are not just testimonies, oral/gendered histories, creative/critical writings, satires, poems, or short/long fiction. It is this and much more. The conference will have a section on the visual forms such as graphic images, paintings and photographs to explore this other ‘reality’.

Themes under discussion:

• Sectarian violence and Women
• Caste, Society and Violence
• Women and the mutilated body
•  Humiliation and Self
•  After-rape: Recovery, Revival and Reconciliation
•  Experience and Body: Vulnerable and Viable
•  After-experience: Body, trauma, memory and forgetting
•  War and Women
• Widows, half-widows and war-widows
• Visual culture and women
• Cinematic (mis)representation of the traumatic woman
•  Memory, history and women

Last date for abstract submission: 10th August, 2017

For queries: southasianremembering@gmail.com

Registration charges:-

Students/ Research Scholars: Rs. 2000/-

Faculty Members: Rs. 3000/-

Guest Convener:

Prof. Rachel Bari

Kuvempu University

Shimoga 

Contact No: 9448244273 

Conveners: 

Prof Atanu Bhattacharya 

Dr. Ishmeet Kaur 

Contact No: 9974092042