Monday, February 18, 2013

History of Science in South Asia

S. R. Sarma recently sent me an announcement for a new journal, History of Science in South Asia, which he describes as a publication "for the history of all forms of scientific thought and action, ancient and modern, in all regions of South Asia." The editorial board is seeking submissions, read the focus and scope and information for authors sections for more details.

Writing and the Inscription of Power in South Asia


Poster with workshop schedule
Saturday, April 6
9:30am-5:30pm
229 Carr Bldg
Duke University
This workshop draws on a range of disciplines (history, anthropology and literature) to explore questions of how writing literally under-wrote projects of cultural dominance and resistance in this key region of the world.  Beyond the activity of mere inscription, our workshop focuses historically on the material and symbolic ways writing served to establish and maintain cultural forms of power.  We also seek to explore questions about how writing was a strategy for redefining and transforming the historical terrain on which people in South Asia constructed and organized their lives. Our various participants bring together a mixture of language varieties (classical and vernacular) in various scripts and genres to demonstrate how writing in different political and social constituencies impacted cultural life in South Asia, especially in regions beyond the Hindi heartland. The workshop thus has the overall goal of advancing a more general and comparative understanding of the relationship between language, culture and power in South Asia.
(Keynote by Nile Green — Friday, April 5)

Friday, February 15, 2013

Tamil Nadu State Archives

In a recent issue of Sagar: A South Asian Research Journal, Sundar Vadlamudi, Department of History, University of Texas at Austin, provides an informative overview of the Tamil Nadu State Archives.