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South Asia Institute The University of Texas at Austin NEWSLETTER FALL 2014 Letter from the Director Dear Colleagues, Students and Friends, from Karachi’s National Academy of Performing Arts This has been an exciting and hectic (NAPA) in the Spring semester. The latter visits were part year of academic and cultural activity at of a three-year exchange program between NAPA and UT’s the South Asia Institute (SAI). We started Butler School of Music, facilitated by a $1 million federal the year with the Fall 2013 Seminar grant. While NAPA students learned various aspects of the Series, ‘Muslims from the Margins,’ Western classical tradition during their stay, FJWU scholars inviting scholars of history and religion attended classes and conferences and worked with individual to discuss intra-communal challenges UT mentors to produce research papers and new course to Muslim hegemonies in South designs. We look forward to continuing both exchange Asia. Also in Fall 2013, we hosted the programs in 2014-15. Our outreach officers, meanwhile, biennial Texas Asia Conference for graduate students, with conducted workshops to encourage the study of India and participants coming from as far as Norway and China. These South Asia at K-12 schools during the year. were followed by the Spring 2014 Seminar Series, ‘Conflict Unfortunately, we had to bid goodbye to Prof. Gail and Recovery in South Asia,’ joined by speakers from the Minault, one of the foremost scholars of South Asian history, worlds of public policy, academia and the media. Another who decided to call it a day at the end of the 2013-14 year. major conference in Spring 2014, Buddhism’s Boundaries, She leaves behind very large shoes to fill and will be missed saw scholars discuss the interactions between Buddhism and sorely by her colleagues and friends. In the 2014-15 academic other major religions of South Asia. These conferences and year, however, we are fortunate to welcome three new faculty seminars were interspersed with film screenings, talks and into our community: Prof. A. Azfar Moin in Religious lectures by UT-Austin faculty and guests from around the Studies, Prof. Jason Cons in Public Affairs and Malayalam country and abroad. The year ended with the colorful and Lecturer Darsana Sasi in Asian Studies. highly popular Music and Dances of India Festival, which Our active engagement with the academic community provided a unique opportunity for musicians, dance teachers and the public, our faculty and students publishing books and students to showcase their talents to the public. and papers and delivering invited presentations around the In collaboration with the Quetta-based Balochistan world, and of course the hard work and dedication of the Archives and the British Library, SAI embarked on a project staff at SAI helped us secure the NRC and FLAS grant for the to catalog, digitize and make publicly available rare and next four year cycle. We look forward to using the awards for endangered manuscripts in Balochi, Pashto and Persian from expanding our academic and cultural activities in the coming the Pakistani province of Balochistan. The year was also very years and deepening our ties with the community at large. successful in terms of outreach. We hosted eight faculty from Thank you. the Fatima Jinnah Women University (FJWU) in Rawalpindi, Regards, Pakistan – four each in the two semesters – and four students In this Issue... SAI Welcomes New Faculty ....................................................1 In Honor of Professor Gail Minault ....................................13 Photo Gallery ............................................................................2 Austin to Karachi: A Melodious Journey ...........................15 Faculty, Student & Alumni News ...........................................3 Reception and Screening with Sadia Shepard ...................16 South Asia Book Awards .........................................................6 Reflections on the FJWU Exchange ....................................17 Spring 2014 Seminar Series .....................................................7 2013 Texas Asia Conference ................................................19 Fall 2013 Seminar Series ........................................................7 SAI collaborates with Huston-Tillotson .............................20 HUF undergrad wins Yale Hindi Debate ..............................8 Project to digitize Balochistan manuscripts ......................21 K-12 Outreach .........................................................................9 SAGAR – Call for Papers .....................................................21 The Very Old is Very New ....................................................11 Seminar Series: Fall 2014 ......................................................22 SAI Welcomes New Faculty Jason Cons Darsana M. Sasi Research Assistant Professor, Lecturer, Asian Studies LBJ School of Public Affairs Dr. Darsana M. Sasi takes Prof. Jason Cons’ research over as Malayalam instructor lies at the intersection from her mentor Dr. M.R. of history, politics, and Unnithan, who retired in geography. He has published Spring 2014. She joins the several ethnographic studies UT faculty after teaching for on life along the India- two years under Malayalam Bangladesh border in journals such as Ethnography, Mission, a Kerala government Political Geography, and Modern Asian Studies, project, and an earlier guest lecturership at NSS following his 2011 doctoral dissertation titled ‘The College, Thiruvananthapuram. She was also working Fragments and their Nation(s): Sensitive Space Along for the last seven years as a Malayalam presenter for the India-Bangladesh Border.’ He has also presented India’s national television (Doordarshan) and radio his research at annual conferences of the Association (All India Radio) broadcasters. for Asian Studies, American Anthropological Sasi is teaching both first-year and second-year Association, American Sociological Association and Malayalam courses in Fall 2014. “The first-year course other academic bodies. will focus on the Malayalam alphabet and grammar, He is now working on a study of postcolonial but I will make it more interactive with video territory, looking at a series of enclaves along the presentations and plenty of class conversations,” she India-Bangladesh border. “It’s a historical and told SAI. “Second-year students will learn more about ethnographic study of the ways these enclaves have Kerala itself as well as formal and informal uses of been caught up in debates about the border and how the Malayalam language.” In addition, she is teaching people living in them navigate precarious border a seminar on social and religious performing arts of arrangements on a daily basis,” he told SAI. Other South India, with special emphasis on Kerala. current projects include how climate change and Sasi received her doctoral degree in Malayalam practices such as shrimp aquaculture in Bangladesh literature from University of Kerala in December influence the lives of its displaced and landless 2013. In January 2014, her book Padayani, based on populations. “I am also working on a collaborative her M.Phil. thesis on a popular folk art in central project on the overlap between resource frontiers and Kerala, was published by Paridhi Publications, political boundaries in Southern Asia,” he said. Thiruvananthapuram. Her research focuses on Cons received his doctorate in 2011 from comparative literary analysis, and she has published Cornell’s Department of Development Sociology. He articles such as ‘Thina Sankalpam Leelakaavyathil,’ a arrives at UT after two years as assistant professor of comparative study of the styles of ancient and modern international relations at Bucknell University, where poetry; ‘Pennezhuthu Kadavile Mattathy,’ a feminist he taught courses on human security; borders, traffic, view of the Malayalam novel Mattathy; and ‘GODOT and statelessness; sovereignty; and globalization. He Inekathirikkunna Malayalanadakam,’ a study of the won’t be teaching in Fall 2014. “But I’m likely in the English play Waiting for Godot. She has also presented long run to teach courses on climate, agrarian change, several research papers at seminars and conferences and borders in South Asia and beyond,” he said. across Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Cons is keen to be a part of SAI’s work focusing Austin is offering Sasi her first opportunity of on the history and future of Bangladesh. “I would living abroad. “It is a daunting experience to come to also be interested in working to facilitate a broader Texas from Kerala, but I am very happy to be here,” discussion of postcolonial territory in South Asia she said. “UT is one of the world’s best universities that cuts across geographic (and possibly regional) and SAI has plenty of resources for teachers and boundaries,” he said. students. I am thrilled to be a part of an exciting t e am .” 1 South Asia Institute Newsletter Fall 2014 A. Azfar Moin Photo Gallery Assistant Professor, Religious Studies Dr. A. Azfar Moin’s research explores the interrelations between politics and religion in early modern and modern South Asia, especially the practices and performance of sovereignty in Islam. His book, The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam (Columbia University Press, New York), was published in 2012 and has won prestigious awards from the American Historical Association, American Academy of Religion, and Association of Asian Studies. “I am now working on the rituals of Muslim