Bharat Britain: South Asians Making Britain, 1870-1950
13/14 September 2010
British Library Conference Centre, St Pancras, London
This major international conference marks the culmination of the AHRC-funded project ‘Making Britain: South Asian Visions of Home and Abroad, 1870-1950’, led by the Open University in collaboration with the University of Oxford and King’s College, London. ‘Bharat Britain’ will showcase new research from distinguished scholars, curators and writers worldwide. Held in partnership with the British Library, it will explore the manifold ways in which South Asians impacted on the formation of Britain’s cultural and political life prior to Independence and Partition in 1947.
‘Bharat Britain’ will map the various networks and affiliations South Asians and Britons formed across boundaries of ‘race’, ‘nation’, ‘culture’ and ‘class’, setting up connections which were to anticipate the shape of things to come. The conference will add historical depth and breadth to our present-day readings of ‘diaspora’ and ‘migration’, and counter the common perception that a British monoculture only began to diversify after the Second World War.
• Opening of panel exhibition ‘South Asians Making Britain, 1858-1950’, which will then tour the UK.
• Launch of online interactive database comprising several hundred entries on South Asians in Britain.
For further details and the programme, please go to: http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/south-asians-making-britain/conference.htm
cfp: Pakistan Workshop 2011: The Politics of Space
The Lake District, 7th-9th May 2011
Although the use of space has been implicitly a part of many academic works, it is important to question how it is defined and reproduced. As a dynamic category, it is constantly divided, regulated and negotiated. In Pakistan, the division between the spaces of the private and the public, the visible and the invisible, between the rural and the urban, the legal and illegal, have in some places blurred and in others rigidified. The concept of space allows for an understanding of these and other categories on a concrete, literal and symbolic way. Some of the categories that emerge from within this realm include (but are not limited to):
- the increasing visibility of regional demands for greater autonomy
- the different and competing expressions of religiosity as well as of politics in space
- the sites at which gender is given meaning and reproduced
- the space of the home/domestic/private as opposed to the external / world /public
- changing and overlapping patterns of spatial segregation, communication and transport in the urban areas
- changing social realities and migration networks between urban and rural areas
- overlapping spheres of control occupied by the military, bureaucracy and elite groups
- spaces of resistance and protest
- diaspora
full details: PakistanWorkshop2011_CFP
Sikhs in Europe: Migration, Identity and Translocal Practices
June 16 – 18 at the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies, Lund University
The Centre for Theology and Religious Studies at Lund University is organizing a conference on the Sikhs in Europe. The aim is to gather leading scholars in the multi-disciplinary field of Sikh studies and discuss current research projects focusing on patterns of migration, identity formations, self-representations, transmission of traditions and translocal practices among Sikhs in different parts of Europe. While two conference days are dedicated to presentation and peer-review of papers by the members of the academic network Sikhs-in-Europe, the third conference day will be a workshop for Ph.D. students affiliated to European universities. The conference is open to students and researchers in all disciplines.
Final programme: Sikhs in Europe – Final Conference Program (1)
The Hermeneutics of Sikh Music (rāg) and Word (shabad)
May 21-23, 2010 Hofstra University Organized by the S.K.K.Bindra Chair in Sikh Studies
Is music a language? Is there meaning in music? Perhaps universal meaning – given the popular platitude that music is the only universal language. Or is the meaning in music mediated by culture to such an extent that one is hard put to speak of universals? If the latter then does that imply a cultural limit to the supposed universal nature of the Gurū Granth Sāhib arguably the musical text par excellence? If the Word needs to be translated across linguistic contexts then does Sikh music also require translation into culture-specific and musical idioms to be efficacious? How to interpret and translate musical meaning? Is it even possible?
The purpose of this conference is to bring these two crucial dimensions of Sikh thought and practice, philosophy and aesthetics, together to initiate an academic dialogue between the Word (language, meaning, interpretation) and its performance in Music and Song (rāg/melody, tāl/metric cycle, laya/tempo, bhāv/expression, instruments etc). The conference aims to grapple with a hermeneutics that can cater for both musical evocation (kīrtan) and philosophical contemplation (kathā) as one phenomenon.
Full details: http://www.hofstra.edu/Academics/Colleges/HCLAS/REL/SIKH/sikh_hermeneutics_may2010.html
Living Together – CRONEM 6th Annual Conference, 29-30 June 2010
Centre for Research on Nationalism, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism (CRONEM)
Joint international conference with the Runnymede Trust
Living Together Civic, Political and Cultural Engagement among Migrants, Minorities and National Populations: Multidisciplinary Perspectives
29 – 30 June 2010, University of Surrey
This conference aims to take stock of the different forms of civic, political and cultural engagement which currently exist, and investigate the factors and processes which are driving them, and the role of public policy in the engagement of women, migrants, minorities and national populations. A special feature of the conference this year will be an event organised by the Runnymede Trust, which will consider where Britain stands 10 years after the Parekh Report on the future of multi-ethnic Britain and 25 years after the Swann Report.
This conference will range across different academic disciplines and explore links between academic knowledge, policy, practice and the media. The format will consist of keynote addresses, parallel paper sessions, convened symposia, a poster session and a panel debate organised by the Runnymede Trust.
Keynotes:
Benjamin Barber, President (CivWorld at Demos) and Walt Whitman Professor Emeritus, Rutgers University, USA
Constance Flanagan, Professor of Youth Civic Development, Penn State University, USA
Yvonne Galligan, Director, Centre for the Advancement of Women in Politics, Queen’s University Belfast
Antje Wiener, Professor of Politics, University of Hamburg, Germany
Runnymede panel:
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, journalist, author and broadcaster
Munira Mirza, Director of Arts, Culture and Creative Industries Policy, Greater London Authority
Tariq Modood, Professor of Sociology, University of Bristol
Jørgen S. Nielsen, Director, Centre for European Islamic Thought, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Lord Bhikhu Parekh, Professor of Political Philosophy, University of Westminster, UK (recorded presentation)
Sally Tomlinson, Professor of Education, University of Oxford
For more about the conference and registration, please visit http://www.surrey.ac.uk/Arts/CRONEM
Transnational Punjab Literature and Culture: Challenges and Opportunities
28 Feb and 1 March 2010
Senate Hall, Punjabi University Patiala.
See attached for full details:card wpc patiala
Seminar on Religion and Social Identity in Punjab
International Seminar on Religion and Social Identity In Punjab
Organised by Department of Sociology, Panjab University, Chandigarh in collaboration with the University of Manchester, UK
FEBRUARY 18-19, 2010
Venue: ICSSR, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India
See attached programme: Punjab University Programme
Multireligious Societies- Polarizing, Co-Existence, Indifference (Conference in Sociology of Religion Aug 4-6)
The University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway, welcomes you to the 20th Nordic conference in sociology of religion. The conference will take place in Kristiansand in August, 4-6, 2010. The conference language is English.
Conference theme: MULTIRELIGIOUS SOCIETIES – POLARIZATION, CO-EXISTENCE, INDIFFERENCE
Plenary speakers: James A. Beckford, Helen Rose Ebaugh, Effie Fokas and Ole Riis.
Have a look at the conference website: www.uia.no/ncsr2010
The website has recently been updated with information on programme, accomodation, suggested sessions, registration and online payment.
Paper abstracts, deadline March 1, 2010
Registration, deadline May 31, 2010.
(Training) Research Methods in the Study of Contemporary Religion 6th-10th September 2010
The Centre for Religion and Contemporary Society at Birkbeck College, and the AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society programme is collaborating to run a residential training event for PhD students involved in the empirical study of contemporary/modern religion. This is a major training initiative, at which leading academics in the UK will be leading sessions on a range of issues including: theorising religion and the role of the researcher of religion, choosing/combining research methods, the research agenda for religion and contemporary society, sampling, using quantitative data-sets, rigour and validity, ethical and political contexts of researching religion, ethnography, visual methods, researching religion and media, and studying spaces and objects. Confirmed speakers include Linda Woodhead, Kim Knott, David Voas, Sophie Gilliat-Ray and Peter Collins.
The event is open to PhD students working across a wide range of disciplines including theology and religious studies, sociology, anthropology, C20th religious history, social policy and geography. Students accepted on to this programme will have their residential costs and travel costs (within the UK) paid for by the project, and there will be no registration fee for those participating. Places at this event are limited, and students interested in attending should complete the application form at: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/crcs/events/CRT_methods_event) and return this electronically to Peta Ainsworth (p.ainsworth@lancaster.ac.uk) by 19th February. Priority will be given to UK-based students in receipt of research council or other institutional studentships, and/or who can demonstrate a clear interest in empirical research in their work. The event will be run at St Catherine’s College in Oxford, with all meals and overnight accommodation provided at the College.
Any queries about this training programme can be sent to Prof Gordon Lynch, Birkbeck College (g.lynch@bbk.ac.uk)
Call for Papers: 1th EASA Biennial Conference: Maynooth, Ireland
1th EASA Biennial Conference: Maynooth, Ireland - 24-27th August 2010
Panel: Material Culture, Migration and the Transnational Imaginary
Short Abstract
Material objects are used to objectify memory; as things with their own trajectories, migrating objects are also used to create new links and new relations, positively or negatively affecting imaginations of community and belonging, making migration a crisis of local/global identification.
Migration is not just about citizens crossing borders from homeland to host-countries; it incorporates global movements of things, ideas and people: transnational movements affecting those who move as well as those who don’t. Migration as the crisis of passage moves the traditional paradigm of migration into the realm of the imaginary, in which distant and previously unknown peoples can become connected through materials circulating in this global domain. The same types of objects cited previously can similarly be used to express outward belonging and membership to “imagined communities” not able to be experienced personally, changing persons and altering their concepts of local and global belonging.
We welcome papers addressing this crisis and how ordinary people respond to their extraordinary situations through the multiple meanings objects provide.
To submit a paper to this panel, see: http://www.nomadit.co.uk/easa/easa2010/paperproposal.php5?PanelID=595
For general information on the conference, see: http://www.easaonline.org/conferences/easa2010/index.htm
Sex and Love in Asian Contexts: Film & History Conference: Representations of Love in Film and Television
Sex and Love in Asian Contexts: Film & History Conference: Representations
of Love in Film and Television (Call for Papers)
November 10-14, 2010
Extended Deadline: March 1, 2009
Asia has, perhaps, the richest history of cultural and commercial exchange in the world, resulting in deeply layered religious, political, and artistic traditions. In cinema, for example, sex and love often are bound up in complex rites, taboos, negotiations, honor codes, pieties, and spiritual allegiances. How do Asians themselves see or represent love? How do non-Asians see or represent love in Asian contexts? This area, comprising multiple panels, welcomes papers treating the representations of love and sex within, or from the perspective of, Asian contexts (East, West, Central, South, Southeast). Proposals for full panels should include the individual proposals for 3-4 presenters.
Please send your 200-word proposal by e-mail to the area chair:
S.A. Thornton
Department of History
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ 85287-4302
Email: Sybil.Thornton@asu.edu (email submissions preferred)
More Info: http://www.uwosh.edu/filmandhistory/
CFP: Special Issue on Religion and the Internet: The Online-Offline Connection
Heidi Campbell & Mia Løvheim have put out a call for papers for a special issue of Information, Communication & Society on Religion and the Internet: The Online-Offline Connection, which is also linked in with the 2010 Conference on Media, Religion, and Culture in Toronto.
In particular this special issues aims to explore the relationship between online and offline forms of religious practice and community. Key questions include:
- What is truly unique about the performance of religion online?
- How is the practice and conception of religion online connected to offline practices, communities and institutions?
- In what ways does religion online reflect trends seen offline in religious culture and practice?
- How do these transformations connect with issues of globalization and glocalization?
You can read the full CFP over at When Religion Meets New Media: http://religionmeetsnewmedia.blogspot.com/2009/11/call-for-papers-for-special-issue-of.html
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