Barbara Stoler Miller Conference

[Guest guest]

The following event announcement has been forwarded to your mailing

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<http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/southasia/cuvl>

 

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The Southern Asian Institute at Columbia University is pleased to

announce the Barbara Stoler Miller Conference for 2004, scheduled

to take place at Columbia University in the city of New York on

February 20-22, 2004. A description and program are provided below.

For further information, including registration, please see the

website of the Southern Asian Institute

(http://www.sipa.columbia.edu/REGIONAL/SAI)

 

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CONTESTING PASTS, PERFORMING FUTURES:

NATIONALISM, GLOBALIZATION AND THE PERFORMING ARTS IN MODERN SOUTH

ASIA

 

The 2004 Barbara Stoler Miller Conference

Columbia University in the City of New York

February 20-22, 2004

 

 

Co-Sponsored by the Southern Asian Institute, Columbia Arts

Productions, Department of Middle East & Asian Languages and

Cultures, and Center for Comparative Literature & Society at

Columbia University; and the Department of Asian & Middle Eastern

Languages & Cultures, and the Provosts Office, at Barnard College.

 

Conference co-ordinator: Professor Indira V. Peterson

Columbia University

 

This conference focuses on the complex dynamics of the processes by

which various classical traditions have been constituted, and

modern practices forged in the performing arts of South Asia in

the course of the twentieth century. It brings together for

fruitful conversation distinguished scholars who are rewriting the

history of the South Asian performing arts in the modern era by

problematizing the cultural politics of the tradition-modernity

dyad vis-a-vis issues of colonialism, nationalism, post-coloniality

and globalization. The conference will serve as a forum for the

discussion of new work from a variety of disciplinary perspectives,

which suggests that in the South Asian performing arts tradition

and modernity are constructed through contestations of imagined

pasts, and the performance of imagined futures, by agents of

diverse caste, class and gender affiliations with varying degrees

of power and authority. The papers and performance-demonstrations

will illuminate the slippages among seemingly conflicting agendas

and categories such as reform and preservation, indigenous and

Western, theory and practice, and the national and the regional,

in these performative negotiations.

 

The annual Barbara Stoler Miller Conference was instituted in honor

of Barbara Stoler Miller (1940-1993), Milbank Professor at Barnard

College. Author of fine translations of classics of Sanskrit

literature, including the Bhagavad Gita, Kalidasa's Sakuntala and

Jayadeva's Gitagovinda, Professor Miller was also deeply interested

in the visual and performing arts of India.

 

In addition to invited participants, we have extended invitations

to performers and scholars of the South Asian performing arts in

the greater New York area to attend the conference.

 

 

PROGRAM

 

Friday, February 20th

 

Opening to the Conference

Venue: Held Auditorium, 304 Barnard Hall, Barnard College

Time: 5.30 - 6.45 p.m.

 

Welcome & Introduction

Vidya Dehejia (Director, Southern Asian Institute)

Indira Viswanathan Peterson (Middle East and Asian Languages and

Cultures, Columbia University)

 

Keynote Address

Lakshmi Subramanian (Center for Studies in Social Sciences,

Calcutta)

From the Tanjore Court to the Madras Academy: The Making of the

Modern Classical Music Tradition

 

Reception

Venue: Sulzberger Parlor, 3rd Floor, Barnard Hall, Barnard College

(Broadway and 117th St.)

Time: 6.45 - 8.00 p.m.

 

 

Saturday, February 21st

 

Registration & Coffee

Venue: Altschul Atrium, Altschul Hall, Barnard College

Time: 8.30 - 9.30 a.m.

 

Session 1: Whose performance? Hereditary communities, new

configurations in modern South Asia

Venue: Room 405, Milbank Hall, Barnard College

Time: 9.30 - 11.30 a.m.

 

Chair: Aaron Andrew Fox (Music, Columbia University)

 

Panelists:

Davesh Soneji (Religious Studies, McGill University)

Memory, Communitas, and the Recovery of Identity: The Kalavantulu

of Coastal Andhra in Independent India

 

Mekhala Devi Natavar (Dance, Duke University)

The Marginalization of Gharanadar Kathaks from Rajasthan

 

Dard Neuman (Anthropology, Columbia University)

The Ustad Remade and the Birth of the Modern Alap

 

 

Break for Lunch

Time: 11.30 a.m. - 1.00 p.m.

 

 

Session 2: Institutions and canons: Constructions of the

classical performing arts in South Asia in the 19th and 20th

centuries

Venue: Room 405, Milbank Hall, Barnard College

Time: 1.00 - 3.00 p.m.

 

Chair: Rachel McDermott (Asian and Middle Eastern Languages and

Cultures, Barnard College)

 

Panelists:

Ratna Roy (Expressive Arts, Evergreen State College)

Odissi Dance: Imagined Past, Reconstructed History, Monolithic

Future?

 

Janaki Bakhle (Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures,

Columbia University)

Two Faces of Music: V.D. Paluskar and V.N. Bhatkhande

 

Hari Krishnan (Dance, Wesleyan University)

Weaving Fragmented Pasts: History, Logic and Form in the

Nineteenth-Century Dance Compositions of the Tanjavur Brothers

(lecture-demonstration)

 

 

Coffee

Venue: Altschul Atrium, Altschul Hall, Barnard College

Time: 3.00 - 3.30 p.m.

 

 

Session 3: Negotiating modernity, and transnational transactions in

the South Asian performing arts

Venue: Room 405, Milbank Hall, Barnard College

Time: 3.30 - 5.30 p.m.

 

Chair: Christian Lee Novetzke (South Asia Studies, University of

Pennsylvania)

 

Panelists:

Saskia Kersenboom (Cultural Anthropology, University of Amsterdam)

Mirrors, Frames, Reflections: On the transformation of Bharata

Natyam in the 20-th Century

 

Janet O'Shea (Dance Studies, University of Surrey)

Performing Locality: Transnational Choreography in Bharata Natyam

 

Richard K. Wolf (Music, Harvard University)

Interpreting Sufi Practice: Drumming, Dancing, and the Complex

Agency of Madho Lal Husain (and beyond)

 

 

Break for Dinner

5.30 - 7.30 p.m.

 

 

Evening Performance

Contesting pasts, performing futures: South Asian dance from 19th

Century sadir to contemporary performance

Venue: Teatro, Casa Italiana of Columbia University (Amsterdam

Avenue & 118th Street)

Time: 7.30 - 10.00 p.m.

 

Solo pieces performed by: Hari Krishnan, Saskia Kersenboom, Rajika

Puri and Uttara Coorlawala

 

 

Sunday, February 22nd

 

Coffee

Venue: Altschul Atrium, Altschul Hall, Barnard College

Time: 8.30 - 9.00 a.m.

 

Round-Up Discussion

Venue: Room 405, Milbank, Barnard College

Time: 9.00 - 11.00 a.m.

 

Paper presenters and invited guests (performance scholars) from the

New York area