Calendar

Spring 2008

April 21, 2008

3:00 pm, 120 Pugh Hall

Water • Gender • Equity: Water in the Karakorum, a lecture by Hermann Kreutzmann, Department of Geography, Free University, Berlin.

Water is a vital issue in Central and South Asia, being both a factor in conflict and dispute. In this lecture Dr. Kreutzmann will present a case study from the Hunza Valley in the Karakoram. He suggests that investigating water use practices can serve as a key to understanding a society’s conflict and cooperation processes. Furthermore, by introducing an holistic approach to irrigation and water management, Dr. Kreutzmann will illustrate the impact of hydraulic resources for survival strategies in the Karakoram.

Hermann Kreutzmann holds the Chair of Cultural Geography and Development
Studies and is director of the Institute of Geography at the Friedrich
Alexander University in Erlangen-Nuernberg, Germany.

Sponsored by the Water Institute, the Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research, Religion, and the Center for the Study of Hindu Traditions (CHiTra).

April 15, 2008

3:00 pm, Keene Faculty Center

Women • India • Social Reform: Limitations and Potentials of Law as an Instrument of Social Reform, a lecture by Madhu Purnima Kishwar.

One of the great challenges faced by social reform movements in India is the big and growing gap between legislation on various issues and the actual practices prevalent in society. Many people interpret this discrepancy as a sign of “the continuing hold of traditional values and customs” and expect that as women become educated and aware of their rights, they will inevitably move in the direction of following “modern laws” enacted for their benefit. This presentation will deal with some of the inherent flaws in legislation aimed at strengthening women’s rights in India which make their honest implementation virtually impossible. As illustrative examples Ms Kishwar will deal with anti dowry legislation, laws against domestic violence and the Women’s Reservation Bill.

Madhu Purnima Kishwar is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi, India. She is the founding editor of Manushi, a journal about women and society published since 1979. Manushi attempts to bridge the gap between academia and activism. Ms. Kishwar is the author of several books and articles including Deepening Democracy: Challenges of Governance and Globalization in India, Rethinking Gender Justice for Indian Women, Religion at the Service of Nationalism and Other Essays, and Gandhi and Women. She is also the founder-president of Manushi Sangathan, an organization which works for democratic reforms to promote greater social justice and strengthen human rights, especially for women. For more information, visit www.manushi-india.org.

Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Hindu Traditions (CHiTra), The Department of Religion, and the Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research.

March 30, 2008

4:00pm until 7:00pm
HPNP Auditorium, 101 S. Newell Drive, Gainesville FL, 32611

Carnatic Music Concert, sponsored by the UF chapter of the Society for the Promotion of Indian Classical Music and Culture amongst Youth (SPICMACAY).

The event will begin with a short lecture demonstration on padams and javalis. These love songs, composed in Tamil and Telugu, are replete with erotic imagery and were composed both for courtesans and for deities. Some of the best known exponents of padams and javalis have belonged to the musical lineage of Vina Dhanammal (1867-1938). Nirmala Sundararajan and Subhashini Parthasarathy, the vocalists in Sunday’s concert, have learned padams and javalis from Mrs. T.Mukta who belongs to this family.

Suggested donation is $15; checks should be made out to SPICMACAY

Nirmala Sundararajan and Subhashini Parthasarathy: vocalists
Gomathi Sundaram : Violinist
Vikram Vasudevan: Mridangam player

Dr. Nirmala Sundararajan and Dr. Subhashini Parthasarathy, mother and daughter, are vocalists in Carnatic music. Both have done doctoral work in music and Dr Parthasarathy’s research focuses on padams and javalis. They have been trained in a rich tradition of Carnatic music by Sangeeta Kala Acharya T. Mukta and Sangita Kalanidhi T. M. Thyagarajan. They have both performed widely in India and abroad and are the recipients of many awards. Subhashini Parthasarathy is an 'A' grade artiste of All India Radio and Doordarshan.

Drs Sundararajan and Parthasarathy have given thematic concerts in Madras. One of the best known series was the set of nine concerts devoted to compositions on the “navagraha” or “nine planets” in which they presented 225 compositions in 200 ragas by nearly 100 composers. Both singers are well known for their rendition of padams and javalis.

March 20-22, 2008

An Ocean of Devotion: Regional Traditions

• Download PDF of Large poster
• Download PDF of Small poster
• Thursday, March 20, 7:30 pm, Keene Faculty Center
  Keynote Address: Humoring the Saints: Mirabai and her Guru
  Dr. John Stratton Hawley, Barnard College / Columbia University
• Friday, March 21, 9am–12noon, Pugh Hall 210
  Imagined Landscapes: Space and Place in the Haridwara Mahatmya
  Jim Lochtefeld, Carthage College
  
  Legal Diglossia in Premodern India, Cambodia, and Java
  Tim Lubin, Washington and Lee University
  
  The Kasikhanda and Varanasi’s Visvesvara Temple
  Travis L. Smith, University of Florida
  
• Friday, March 21, 3 pm
  Ocean of Devotion Exhibit at the Harn Museum
  
• Saturday, March 22, 9am–12noon, Pugh Hall 210
  The Persistence of Erotic Devotion: Telugu Javali Songs in South Indian Courtesan Traditions
  Davesh Soneji, McGill University
  
  An Assembly of Love Songs: Gender, Genre, and Performance in Contemporary Sufi Practice
  Kelly Pemberton, George Washington University
  
  Sikh Langar: Sharing the Fruits of Labor
  Gurinder Singh Mann, University of California, Santa Barbara

March 22, 2008

Saturday, March 22, 2pm–5pm, Pugh Hall 210
Eating Cultures : Gender, Globalization & the Politics of Consumption in South Asia

• The Rice Ball with a Stone Inside: Food Metaphors and Women Sanskritists in the Neo Liberal Economy of India
  Laurie Patton, Emory University
• Gandhi’s Environmental Legacy: Food Democracy, Globalization and Social Movements
  Whitney Sanford, University of Florida
• Global Food, Global Religion: Gandhi and the Cosmopolitan Cow
  Mark Juergensmeyer, University of California, Santa Barbara

March 18, 2008

Tuesday, March 18, 4:00 - 5:15 pm, Keene-Flint Hall, Room 5
Integrative Medicine in America: Hindu and Chinese Healing Traditions
By Professor Linda Barnes

Dr. Linda L. Barnes is a medical anthropologist, historian, and religion scholar whose work bridges these disciplines. An Associate Professor of Family Medicine and Pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, she directs the Boston Healing Landscape Project, which focuses on culturally and religiously grounded complementary / alternative medicines among minority and immigrant patient communities served at Boston Medical Center. Her books include Religion and Healing in America (Oxford University Press, 2004, co-edited with Susan Sered), and Needles, Herbs, Gods, and Ghosts: China, Healing, and the West to 1848 (Harvard University Press, 2005). Dr. Barnes is currently working on a social history of Chinese medicine and healing traditions in the U.S. from 1849 to the present, and is immersed in interviewing practitioners from every cultural background throughout the country. She will also direct a new masters program in Medical Anthropology and Cross-Cultural Practice, beginning in the Fall of 2008, at BUSM.

Her talk will explore intersections of religious, cultural, and therapeutic pluralism in the United States, through examples drawn from Chinese and Hindu traditions.

March 5, 2008

3 to 5 pm, Ustler Hall Atrium
Waterscapes: Seeking Nature and Justice Along Indian Rivers, a lecture by Dr. Amita Baviskar.

Indian rivers have been the locus of projects both spiritual and secular. Diverse practices, ranging from devotion to dam-building, have radically transformed how different social groups relate to rivers. This lecture will discuss the various cultural meanings that rivers embody in contemporary India, and how these meanings are contested in ongoing struggles over the place of rivers in nature and culture. In particular, it will focus on the conflicts around the Narmada river in central India and on the Yamuna river in the city of Delhi.

Dr. Amita Baviskar is affiliated with The Institute of Economic Growth (IEG). Established in 1958 with a focus on economics, demography and sociology, EG is one of India's leading research institutions in the fields of economic and social development.

Sponsored by the Water Institute, the Center for the Study of Hindu Traditions (CHiTra), the Center for Women's Studies and Gender Research, and the Department of Religion. Part of the Water, Gender and Equity in India - Symposium and Lecture Series, funded by the University of Florida Water Institute.

Friday, January 25, 3 pm

Norman Hall 137
Spiritual Transformation and Lessons for Environmental Negotiations, a lecture by Professor Aaron T. Wolf, Department of Geosciences, Oregon State University; Corvallis, OR

Aaron Wolf is a professor of geography in the Department of Geosciences at Oregon State University . He has an M.S. in water resources management (1988, emphasizing hydrogeology) and a Ph.D. in environmental policy analysis (1992, emphasizing dispute resolution) from the University of Wisconsin , Madison. His research focuses on issues
relating transboundary water resources to political conflict and cooperation, where his training combining environmental science with dispute resolution theory and practice have been particularly appropriate.

Wolf has acted as consultant to the US Department of State, the US Agency for International Development, and the World Bank, and several governments on various aspects of international water resources and dispute resolution. He has been involved in developing the strategies for resolving water aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict, including co-authoring a State Department reference text, and participating in both official and "track II" meetings between co-riparians. He is author of Hydropolitics Along the Jordan River: The Impact of Scarce Water Resources on the Arab-Israeli Conflict (United Nations University Press, 1995); co-author of Core and Periphery: A Comprehensive Approach to Middle Eastern Water (Oxford University Press, 1997), and Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Resolution: Theory, Practice and Annotated References (United Nations University Press, 2000); and editor of Conflict Prevention and Resolution in Water Systems (Elgar, 2002). All told, he
is (co-) author or (co-) editor of seven books, and close to fifty journal articles, book chapters, and professional reports on various aspects of transboundary waters.

Wolf, a trained mediator/facilitator, directs the Program in Water Conflict Management and Transformation, through which he has offered workshops, facilitations, and mediation in basins throughout the world. He developed and coordinates the Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database, which includes a computer compilation of 400 water-related
treaties, negotiating notes and background material on fourteen case-studies of conflict resolution, news files on cases of acute water-related conflict, and assessments of indigenous/traditional methods of water conflict resolution (www.transboundarywaters.orst.edu). He is also a member of UNESCO’s task force for the development of the Sixth Phase of the International Hydrology Program (2002-2007), the
UNESCO/ADC Third Millennium Program on International Waters, and IWRA’s Committee for International Collaboration, and is a co-director of the Universities Partnership on Transboundary Waters.

Wolf is a member of the Oregon Academy of Sciences, the Association of American Geographers, the American Water Resources Association, and the International Water Resources Association, and an associate member of the International Association for Water Law. He is an associate editor of World Water Policy, and the Journal of the American Water Resources Association, and is on the editorial board of Water International .

Fall 2007

Saturday, December 1, 2007

Lecture Demonstration: 4.00-4.30 pm
Concert: 5-7 pm
HPNP Auditorium, University of Florida
An Evening of Hindustani Music with Vaijayanthi Gopinath (vocal), Dr Tanmay Lele (Tabla), and Venkatesh Srinivasan (Harmonium).

Vaijayanthi Gopinath (Jacksonville) is a student of Smt. Lakshmi Shankar, the renowned singer and exponent of the Patiala Gharana style of music. Mrs Gopinath has been learning Hindustani Classical music for over twenty years and has given several performances both as a solo artist and with her teacher all over the country.

Tanmay Lele is on the faculty of Chemical Engineering at UF. He learned tabla for many years from Shri Anant Lele in Bombay.

Venkatesh Srinivasan (Merrill Lynch, Jacksonville) had his original training in Bombay. His unique style of playing the Harmonium with western chords and improvisation techniques come from his training at Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning, Bangalore.

This is a Benefit Concert in support of CHiTra’s Classical Indian Music Endowment Fund at the University of Florida Foundation. The endowment will be permanent and the earnings will go toward future lecture/demonstrations, concerts, and music workshops.

Thursday, October 18, 1:55 pm

Anderson 32
Cynthia Snodgrass, Stirling University, Scotland, presents
"Gandhi's Weapons of Truth and Non-Violence: The Power of Sung-Prayers and Ritual"

Tuesday, October 9, 7 pm

CSE E119
Dr. Kelly Alley, Alumni Professor of Anthropology and the Director of the Anthropology Program, Auburn University, presents "River Goddesses, River Linking: From Sacred to Transferable Waters." co-sponsored with the Water Institute.

Wednesday, September 5, 2007, 7 pm

219 Dauer Hall (Ruth McQuown Room)
Nathan McGovern (University of California, Santa Barbara) presents Brahma in Thailand: Buddhists worshipping a Hindu God?

In this presentation, Nathan McGovern will argue that our knowledge of Asian religions is still framed by colonial and Euro-centric ideas of "religion" that obscure our understanding of Hinduism and Buddhism in subtle yet profound ways. He will discuss the worship of Brahma in Thailand, the ways in which Buddhists worship a "Hindu" creator deity, and show how this phenomenon is especially apt for exposing the limitations of Western understandings of religion.

Nathan McGovern received his BA in Physics and Religious Studies from Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He now is a fourth-year graduate student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he studies South Asian religions and Thai Buddhism. His major interests include the history of Indian Buddhism, early Buddhist canonical literature, Theravada Buddhism, and the relationship between Buddhism and Hinduism in South Asia. Nathan's recent research focused on “Brahma Worship in Thailand: The Erawan Shrine in its Social and Historical Context,” in which he explores issues of syncretism and Indianization in Southeast Asia using the contemporary Thai worship of Brahma as a focal point. Nathan is now conducting further research on Thai religion comparing the roles that Brahmanical and Buddhist monastic lineages have played in Thai history, especially with respect to Thai monarchical institutions.

Spring 2007

January 31, 2007, 7:00 p.m.

An Andal Evening: An Evening of Music, Classical Dance, and Discussion.
Harn Museum Auditorium

Public lecture, music and dance on the works of Andal, a ninth century woman saint from south India. Part of the Religion, Literature and the Performing Arts series.

The program will include:

• a dance on Andal's poem "A Thousand Elephants...' (varanam ayiram)
• musical renderings of Andal's Tiruppavai
• a brief demonstration of Temple style Recitation of some verses from the Tiruppavai
• Of Decoration and Disguise: Enjoying the Body of the Goddess at the Andal Temple in Srivilliputtur, a lecture by Professor Archana Venkatesan, St. Lawrence University
  
  Professor Venkatesan will also give a graduate / faculty seminar and speak in undergraduate classes.

Tuesday, Febuary 13

Scroll paintings and Bardic Poetry in Bengal, a lecture by Professor Frank Korom
5:00pm to 6:00pm in TUR (Turlington) L005

Frank Korom will explore the changing world of the Patuas, a community of itinerant scroll painters and singers residing in Medinipur District, West Bengal, India. These impoverished artists are adapting to modernity by expanding their repertoires to include contemporary social and political themes. Originally, they were Hindus who converted to Islam during the medieval period, but because they sing about Hindu gods and goddesses for Hindu patrons, they have not become fully accepted into the Muslim mainstream. Even though the tradition is changing rapidly as a result of modernity, Korom argues for a form of “alternative modernity,” which allows for change within the tradition while adhering to local aesthetic sensibilities. To demonstrate this “alternative modernity,” songs on modern themes sung in traditional meters will accompany photo illustrations.

Frank J. Korom is an Associate Professor of religion and anthropology at Boston University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992 for a dissertation on Dharmaraj, a local village deity worshipped in rural regions of West Bengal from medieval times to the present. He is a Guggenheim fellow and guest curator of the exhibition Village of Painters: Narrative Scrolls from West Bengal, which is currently showing at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico until April 29, 2007. His accompanying book by the same name was published by the Museum of New Mexico Press in 2006. The Roy C. Craven, Jr. Memorial Lecture is co-sponsored by the Center for the Study Hindu Traditions, and the Center for the Humanities in the Public Sphere, in cooperation with the Jerome A. Yavitz Charitable Foundation.

Thursday, March 8

Hinduism and Hindustani Music
A lecture and performance by Professor Guy Beck, University of North Carolina, Wilmington
5:10 - 7:00 pm, Turlington Hall, L005

Guy Beck completed an M.A. in Musicology (1986) and Ph.D. in South Asian Religion (1989) from Syracuse University. He is the author of Sonic Theology: Hinduism and Sacred Sound (1993), and the editor of Sacred Sound: Experiencing Music in World Religions (2006). He is currently teaching Hinduism and Religion and Music at UNC Wilmington and Tulane University. In 2001, he delivered the Michaelmas Lectures on Hinduism and Music at Oxford University.

He has released two CD’s of classical and devotional music, SACRED RAGA (New Orleans, 1999), and SANJHER PRADIP (Calcutta, 2004).

Professor Beck’s has received several fellowships including a Fulbright (1992-93). He was recently awarded a Senior Performing Arts Fellowship from the American Institute of Indian studies (A.I.I.S.) for 2007-2008.

Guy Beck is one of the first Americans to become proficient in the tradition of North Indian Hindustani vocal music, and the first to appear in an All-India Music Conference (Tansen Sangit Sammelan, 1977 in Calcutta). Performing Hindustani vocal music for over twenty-five years, he has given concerts at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion (1998), the International Congress of Vedanta (1994), and at Oxford University (UK) in 2001.  He has also performed on Radio Nepal and Indian TV Doordarshan.

Tuesday, March 20

5 pm, 471 Grinter Hall

Reframing the Erotic: Literary Change in Hindi, 1900-1930, a talk by Professor Valerie Ritter, University of Chicago.

In this paper, Professor Ritter addresses the question of how poetry in Hindi (now the national language of India) had to change once the classical erotic mode of srngara was deemed “obscene”. Reviewing ways in which cultural authenticity claims impinged upon literary depictions of women, she discusses criticism by Hindi authors of classically-styled erotic poetry and of women as poetic subjects. She also examines how later, in the 1920s, a justification for the erotic literary past emerges which claims that the erotic literary affect of srngara presents biological truths and actually informs the realist “scenes of nature” of modern literature.

Valerie Ritter is an Assistant Professor in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. Her research has focused on late nineteenth and early twentieth century Hindi poetry and poetics, and their post-colonial interpretations.

Tuesday, April 10

To the Divine through Beauty, a lecture by Dr. Vidya Dehejia
Harn Museum
6:00 pm

Vidya Dehejia provides a preview from her forthcoming book, "The Body Adorned" that addressees the dominance of the human form in India's art, the sensuous nature of the imagery used to portray deities to be approached with veneration, the intimate portrayal of divine couples, and the manner in which sacred spaces happily accommodate what might be termed "profane" imagery. A public lecture and graduate/faculty seminar. Dr. Vidya Dehejia is the Barbara Stoler Miller Professor of Indian and South Asian Art at Columbia University. The Roy C. Craven, Jr. Memorial Lecture is co-sponsored by the Center for the Study Hindu Traditions and the Harn Museum of Art.

Dr. Deehjia has authored over twenty major books and numerous articles on Indian art history, Buddhist archaeology and inscriptions, and Tamil devotional poetry. As the deputy director and chief curator of the Smithsonian's Freer Gallery and the Arthur M.Sackler Gallery from 1994-2002, she organized several important exhibitions, including 'The Sensuous and the Sacred: Chola Bronzes from South India," (American Federation of Arts, New York, jointly with Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 2002), "India Through the Lens: Photography 1840?1911." (Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.,2000) and "Devi: The Great Goddess." (Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1999.)

Dr. Dehejia received her PhD from Cambridge University, England. Over the past thirty years, she has combined research with teaching and exhibition-related activities around the world. Extensive field travel in South Asia, with visits to sites of importance in Southeast Asia, has given her first hand familiarity with the art of the region.

Dr. Dehejia incorporates her knowledge of classical Sanskrit and Tamil, her lyrical translations of ancient poetry, and material from unpublished manuscripts, to illumine art. She has explored the theoretical basis for the portrayal of visual narratives in the context of India?s sculpture and painting, and has examined issues of gender and colonialism. Over time, her work has ranged from Buddhist art of the centuries BCE to the esoteric temples of North India, and from the sacred bronzes of the South to the art of British India. Management and curatorial experience at the Smithsonian's Freer and Sackler Galleries has provided broader scope to convey the excitement of her field to non-specialist audiences.

Saturday, April 21

3:00-5:00 pm, HPNP Auditorium, University of Florida

Carnatic music concert on the Jaltarangam by Mrs Seetha Doraiswamy and Ms Ganavya Doraiswamy accompanied by Abishek Raaja on the mridangam. Free for students with ID; $15 per person or $25 per family. Cosponsored by the Center for World Arts.

Seetha Doraiswamy (82) is the only female professional player of the jaltarangam instrument. She has given over a thousand concerts in India, the middle east and USA and has given recitals for many television and radio stations in India. Mrs Doraiswamy is committed to spreading the knowledge of this little known art form to anyone who is interested.

Jalatarangam ("Water waves") is an instrument with a set of at least 15 porcelain cups of different sizes and thickness filled with water to various levels. The cups are arranged in the form of a semi circle, in front of the player. These are struck with bamboo sticks to get the right note.

Each cup gives a different tone, and this has to be adjusted to get the required tone by adding or reducing water. The larger and thicker cups give low tones while the smaller and thinner one, the shriller tones. Hence, each cup has to be suitably filled with water to get the different tone for each raga, and hence changing from one song to the next of a different raga could be time consuming. In cold climates, only hot water has to be used as cold water does not give the required effect.

A pair of small bamboo sticks of not more than 9 inches in length (23 cms) neatly cut and tapering at one end is used for playing the instrument. One needs to have a perfect hand coordination between the two hands and excellent knowledge of the Raagas and Tala (rhythm) to produce a perfect recital.

TBA 

Singing is Believing: SUR'S OCEAN as a Sea of Icons, a lecture by Professor Jack Hawley
Venue TBA

A public lecture and graduate/faculty seminar. Part of the Religion, Literature and the Performing Arts series. Professor Jack Hawley is a Columbia University professor. Hawley has recently translated the Sur Sagar,  a collection of poems on Krishna by the 16th century (?) Hindi poet, Surdas.

Past Events

2005-2006 Events

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