Remember? Reconcile? Revise?: 2016 Sri Lanka Graduate Student Conference |

Lady in a white sari touching a memorial.

November 4, 2016 - 10:00am – 1:00pm Closed Event; November 5, 2016 - 10:00am to 5:00pm

Anthropology Building 50, Room 51A

Open to the Public on Nov. 5th; Nov. 4 will be a closed event.
 

The 2016 Sri Lanka Graduate Conference will be held on November 4th (closed to the public) and 5th (open to the Public) at the Center for South Asia at Stanford University. The conference is co-funded by the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies and the Center for South Asia, Stanford. As with the three previous graduate conferences, this workshop will bring together graduate students both in the final writing up stage and pre-research/planning stages from a variety of disciplines and institutions. The graduate conference aims to enhance intellectual exchange on Sri Lanka; emphasize the production of empirical and non-sectarian knowledge; focus attention on recent transformations of key concepts; strengthen and build a new cohort of researchers (and research) across disciplines and institutions; and strengthen relationships between American graduate students and local intellectual circles in Sri Lanka.In 2016 our theme is Remember? Reconcile? Revise? Given that Sri Lanka is in the midst of discussing reconciliation mechanisms as well weathering new electoral and economic challenges, this year our focus is not only on the ways in which  the past features in the present, but also the multi-layered nature of the histories and memories being drawn upon.

Schedule:

Remember? Revise? Reconcile?
2016 Sri Lanka Graduate Student Conference

Friday, November 4, 2016

10:00am – 1:00pm Closed Event: Pre-Dissertation Development Seminar

(Center for South Asia Office, Encina Hall West, Room 104)

Participants:

Kimberley Kolor (SSEAS, UC Berkeley)

Sudesh Mantillake (University of Peradeniya/ University of Maryland)

Achintha Bandara (Texas Tech University)

Krishantha Fedricks (University of Texas, Austin)

Narayani Sritharan (University of Massachusetts – Amherst)

Commentators: Profs. Sharika Thiranagama (Stanford), Mythri Jegathesan (Santa Clara), Jeanne Maracek (Swarthmore), Daniel Bass (Cornell)

Film Screening & Discussion: Dheepan (Palme d’Or 2015)

5:00-7:30pm, Building 50, 51A

Palme d'Or Winner. Gripping saga of three Sri Lankan refugees who pose as a family to escape their war-torn home only to be caught up in gang violence on the streets of Paris.

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Saturday, November 5, 2016

Building 50, 51A

450 Serra Mall (Main Quad)

10:00am – 10:30am

Welcome and Introductory Remarks

10:30am – 12:30pm  Panel 1: Re-envisioning Mobility and Territory from Below

Mapping Tamil Diaspora City in Paris, France

· Nicole Berger (Princeton University)

“A Tale of Two Abdul Caders: Territory, Mobility and Political Belonging in 1940s India and Sri Lanka”

· Kalyani Ramnath (Princeton University)

The Tamil in Colombo: Class and Nation in A. Santhan’s Rails Run Parallel

·Mahendran Thiruvarangan (CUNY)

Discussant: Prof. Usha Iyer (Stanford)

12:30pm – 2pm   LUNCH

2:00pm – 4:00pm Panel 2: Markets of Value

Tasting Ceylon: Discerning the Value of Sri Lankan Tea”

·Alexios Tsigkas (The New School for Social Research)

Buying and Selling Colombo: Some Reflections on Luxury Real Estate

·Alessandra Radicati (London School of Economics)

3:00pm BREAK

The Work of Care: Highlights from the Field of Counseling in Kandy, Sri Lanka

·Nadia Augustnyiak (CUNY)

The Visual Landscape of Images of Suffering: Mourning and Activism in the Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora

·Ramya Janandharan (UC Berkeley)

Discussant: Prof. Thomas Blom Hansen (Stanford)

 

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