Sociology of South Asia: Postcolonial Legacies, Global Imaginaries

Symposium on South Asia

Friday, February 3, 2023 8:30 AM to 12:30 PM EST
Virtual

Sociology of South Asia: Postcolonial Legacies, Global Imaginaries

Research on South Asia remains marginalized within U.S. sociology. At this symposium, we explore how South Asia offers a uniquely generative site from which to rethink sociological practice. How can it build on a rich transnational intellectual legacy? How can it further efforts to decolonize the discipline? How can the sociology of South Asia be more liberatory, ethical, critical, and reflexive, and how can sociologists of South Asia better support one another?

The symposium would also feature a space for mentoring opportunities, sharing and discussing work, which is open to all.

 

Event Schedule

Panel 1: Envisioning a Sociology of South Asia
Gowri Vijayakumar PhotoGowri Vijayakumar is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Brandeis University, USA. She is the author of At Risk: Indian Sexual Politics and the Global AIDS Crisis (2021) and has published in World Development, Social Problems, and Gender and Society, among other journals. Smitha Radhakrishnan PhotoSmitha Radhakrishnan is LuElla LaMer Professor of Women’s Studies and Sociology at Wellesley College, USA. She is the author of Appropriately Indian: Gender and Culture in a New Transnational Class (2011) and Making Women Pay: Microfinance in Urban India (2022).
Nida Kirmani PhotoNida Kirmani is Associate Professor of Sociology in the Mushtaq Ahmad Gurmani School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Lahore University of Management Sciences and Associate Professor of South Asian Studies at the Brandeis University. She is the author of Questioning ‘the Muslim Woman’: Identity and Insecurity in an Urban Indian Locality (2013). Amita Baviskar PhotoAmita Baviskar (Ashoka University, India) Amita Baviskar is a Professor of Environmental Studies and Sociology and Anthropology at Ashoka University, India. She is the author of In the Belly of the River: Tribal Conflicts over Development in the Narmada Valley (1995). Her recent publications include Uncivil City: Ecology, Equity and the Commons in Delhi (2020) and edited books Elite and Everyman: The Cultural Politics of the Indian Middle Classes (2011).
Panel 2: Doing Sociology of South Asia
Indulatha Prasad PhotoIndulata Prasad (Arizona State University, US) is Assistant Professor of Women and Gender Studies at Arizona State University, USA. Her current research uses social mapping alongside ethnography to examine how legal rights to redistribute land has impacted Dalit (former untouchables) lives. Her articles have appeared in Economic and Political Weekly, and Women’s Studies International Forum. Manjusha Nair photoManjusha Nair (George Mason University, US) is Associate Professor of Sociology at George Mason University, USA, Director of Graduate Studies in sociology, and Director of the Global South Research Hub. Her research has been on the possibilities and limitations of the counter-hegemonic processes that challenge neoliberal globalization in the Global South. She is the author of the award-winning book, Undervalued Dissent: Informal Worker’ Politics in India (2016). Her current research examines Indian economic flows to Africa, through the lens of historically embedded anti-colonial resistance and postcolonial collaborations, yet made relevant in the neoliberal context.
Prashanth Kuganathan PhotoPrashanth Kuganathan is a postdoctoral teaching associate/lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA. He was conferred his Ph.D. in Applied Anthropology (Techers College) and his M.A. in South Asian Studies, both from Columbia University. His doctoral dissertation “Remaking Lives in Northern Sri Lanka: Migration, Schooling, and Language in Postwar Jaffna” examines the intersections of war, education, and linguistic practice in what is considered the most conservative region of the country. Fauzia Husain photoFauzia Husain is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Gender and the Economy (GATE), Rotman School of management, University of Toronto, Canada. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Virginia Sociology Department in 2019. Her research investigates how marginalized people navigate mechanisms of exclusion and inequality, such as stigma, and cultivate inclusion at work and in their intimate lives.
Panel 3: Community Building
  • Open Discussions
  • Mentoring and Networking Opportunity

 

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