Department for South Asian Studies, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin

01/08/2024

Join Critical Pakistan and _Subkontinent for a premiere of The Looking Glass -- a documentary that explores the way power is negotiated, used, and abused in South Asia. Based on ethnographies from Pakistan, it traces the lives of gender diverse communities, specifically the Khwaja Sira, across the spheres of family, education, religion, and economy.
Following the screening, we hope to have conversations about power, gender, violence, and erasure in South Asia. We seek your insights on how these forces operate in unique contexts within and outside South Asia, the role played by art, advocacy, and activism in negotiating them, and how to further goals of reclamation and justice.

When: August 2nd,
Doors open at 6:30 pm
Where: Donaustraße 84, 12043, Berlin

02/07/2024

Dear colleagues, dear students, dear all,

Join us for the BERSAS closing event of the summer term 2024!

The first part of the programm (2-4pm) will be a screening of the documentary film "Shadowlands" (2024), including a talk and discussion with Prof. Dr. Nida Kirmani (LUMS), producer of the film.

The screening and discussion will be followed by a farewell programme and reception (5-7:30pm) in honour of Prof. Dr. Michael Mann. We look forward to an evening of presentations and discussion on current and past research, thinking about how these connect to perspectives of South Asian Studies at IAAW, in Berlin and beyond.

And there will be music!

In anticipation and with regards,

Sadia Bajwa and Johannes Heymann
with the BERSAS Team

22/03/2024

Save the Date!
Gender and Media in the South Asia Region, the Depatment of South Asia Studies and DHARMA (ERC Synergy Grant Project) at the IAAW invite you to the launch of BERSAS. The inaugural event will take place on May 3rd with a workshop to initiate this semester's theme: South Asian Urban Studies.

For more information, click here: https://www.iaaw.hu-berlin.de/de/querschnitt/medialitaet/bersas

06/07/2021

Wann
16.07.2021 von 14:00 bis 19:00
iCal



Dear All,

the Seminar for South Asian Studies cordially invites you to the 33rd Humboldt India Project Workshop, which takes place on Friday, 16th of July, via Zoom. Here, you will find the programme and the participants' abstracts.

If you wish to participate, please send a message until the 15th of July to: [email protected]

The final zoom link will be shared with all participants on the 16th of July.

When? 2:00 pm to 7.00 pm (Kindly note: Berlin time!)

Where? Zoom

Speakers:
Amna Hafeez Mobeen, National Institute of Pakistan Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad
Jamal Ali Bashir, Ph.D. Candidate, Society and Culture in Motion, Martin-Luther-Universität, Halle-Wittenberg
Vikas Dubey, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur
Thahir Jamal Kiliyamannil, ERASMUS+ Fellow, Berlin Graduate School Muslim Culture and Societies, Freie Universität Berlin

All those interested are welcome to attend. We encourage students to join

30/04/2021

33rd Humboldt India Project Workshop

When?
Friday, 16th July 2021
2:00-7:00 pm

Where?
Zoom

Call for Presentations


Whether a PhD, a post-doctoral project, or simply an idea for a future project related to South Asia, you are welcome to come and present at HIP. The goal of the quarterly Humboldt India Project workshops is to provide a platform for the South Asia competence of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and other academic institutes in Berlin. Beginning with the first workshop in 2012, it has functioned as an interdisciplinary forum for the presentation and discussion of individual projects. For past events please click here.

Format: 1 hr per presentation (20 min. presentation + 40 min. discussion). We kindly ask presenters not to read out their papers.

Language: English

Deadline: If you wish to present, please send title of your topic, institutional affiliation, and a five-line abstract to [email protected] by 16th June 2021.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us.

All those interested are welcome to attend. We encourage students to join.

16/03/2021

Conference on “Interreligious Founding”, Berlin, April 8th- 9th, 2021

Persons interested in attending the conference are welcome to register by sending an e-mail to [email protected]. An e-mail with a Zoom link for the workshop will be sent shortly before the start of the conference.

This workshop will constitute a continuation of the dialogue on charitable foundations held between experts of various academic disciplines in Tokyo (2019) and Singapore (2020). As a result of discussions begun at these venues, it has become apparent that the scholarship on endowments, which has unfolded to the greatest extent within Medieval Studies and therefore the landscape of the medieval Latin West, has not adequately addressed the phenomenon of interreligious patronage, that is the participation in foundation activities by persons of different religious traditions. This results from the fact that in the Western Church the sphere of foundations constituted a jealously-guarded prerogative of the majoritarian Latin Christian culture. While the Jews of Ashkenaz were allowed to a very limited extent to create and run their own foundations, the endowment of churches, monasteries and philanthropic institutions by non-Catholic Christians was not tolerated by the church and secular authorities, nor were pagans and Muslims allowed to patronize their own endowments under Christian rule. This restrictive approach was, however, by the standards of other medieval religious traditions rather exceptional. In Byzantium, though the founding of churches and monasteries by non-Orthodox was forbidden already in Late Antiquity, this prohibition was not followed in the breach. In the Islamicate world not only Muslims used waqf extensively, but also Christians and Jews. On the Indian subcontinent rulers often patronized the religious establishments of multiple faiths. The religious syncretism of Japan and China was reflected in the foundation practices of these two lands. By focusing on the interreligious dynamic of founding, the conference participants will fundamentally change current scholarship’s understanding of foundations. The papers stemming from this conference will be published in a special issue of the journal Endowment Studies.

10/02/2021

Joint Call for Contributions to a Research Blog for a Special Issue on
Imaginations and Mediated Performances of Solidarity in South Asia

Media Culture and Repertoires of Coexistence (GAMS, Humboldt University Berlin) &
Media Series of Doing Sociology Blog (JNU, India)

We invite students of Area Studies, Sociology, Social Anthropology and Media Studies as well as young independent researchers to submit research-based articles on imaginations and mediated performances of solidarity in contemporary social and protest movements in South Asia. We welcome short videos/visuals/podcasts to accompany written texts.

In the face of divisive politics and societal polarization, the need to express new forms of solidarity and respectful coexistence acquires exceptional urgency. The special issue seeks to shed light on the richness of media-related strategies, practices and repertoires of individual and collective actors who reclaim or create spaces for resistant imaginations and solidarity. In increasingly media-saturated societies, articulations of solidarity are simultaneously performed in as well as for digitally mediated and material public spaces. In the same way, they often connect translocal spaces and networks across different contexts and borders. The role of these mobile networked publics in the changing public spheres of South Asia therefore demands careful attention.

We are particularly interested in contributions by MA students, doctoral scholars and early career researchers who specialize in the field of media, culture and society in contemporary South Asia.

If you would like to suggest a paper for the special issue, please send us a shorter draft of your article (500-600 words).

The deadline for submissions is 26th February 2021.

Selected authors will be informed by the beginning of April and invited to discuss their draft articles with another selected author. The expanded article version (1000-1200 words) shall be presented in a joint digital workshop on October 4th and 5th, 2021, co-organised by the Department of Gender and Media Studies for the South Asian Region at HU Berlin (GAMS) and Doing Sociology (JNU), India.

The final version of the papers and special issue will be published simultaneously at the two research blogs - Doing Sociology (JNU) and RePLITO - Global Repertoires of Living Together (BUA).

Please submit suggested articles to:
Prof. Maitrayee Chaudhuri (JNU): [email protected]

Prof. Nadja-Christina Schneider (HU): [email protected]

Links:
DOING SOCIOLOGY:
https://doingsociology.org/

MEDIA CULTURE AND REPERTOIRES OF COEXISTENCE: https://www.iaaw.hu-berlin.de/de/querschnitt/medialitaet/veranstaltung/media-culture-and-repertoires-of-coexistence/

18/09/2020

It gives us great pleasure to share the trailer for 'The Sound of Freindship', a documentary by our former assistant professor, Dr. Anandita Bajpai (ZMO), about the Radio Berlin International. The documentary has emerged from her current habilitation project on "Entangled Presences: The Cultural Politics of India-GDR Relations during the Cold War." It is due to release in December 2020.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4qLiM_jflw&feature=youtu.be

A Film on Radio Berlin International in India
+++ To be released in December 2020 +++

The documentary film ‘The Sound of Friendship’ traces the trajectory of Radio Berlin International (RBI), a GDR based international radio broadcaster, from the perspective of its journalists and listeners, based in present day Germany and India. The film is a story of the radio station’s Hindi Programme aired from 1967-1990. It takes viewers from locales in Berlin, where the station was located, to Madhepura, Bihar in India where a Listeners’ Club called the Lenin Club was active. How were transnational ties of friendship performed among actors from India and the GDR through the sonic medium of short waves during the Cold War? How are those ties remembered today, 30 years after the shutdown of the station?

A Film by: Anandita Bajpai (ZMO)
Featuring: Arvind Srivastav, Friedemann Schlender, Mahesh Jha, Sabine Imhof
Editing and Camera (Berlin, Germany): Daniel Gatzmaga
Co-writing and Camera (Madhepura, India): Jyothidas Kelambath Vadakkina

A Film on Radio Berlin International in India +++ To be released in December 2020 +++ The documentary film ‘The Sound of Friendship’ traces the trajectory of...

30/04/2020

Graduate Student Award for MA thesis based on ZMO archival collection One of the main objectives of the Association for the Advancement of the ZMO e.V. is to support and popularize the archival collections within ZMO library. In order to achieve this goal, we conduct special seminars, and provide scholarships. At present, the association offers a Graduate Student Award of 500 EUR (total) for an MA thesis which works with the Petra-Heidrich-Papers held at ZMO to engage specifically with the political struggle of peasant workers in late colonial India. Over a long period of her academic life, Dr Petra Heidrich studied the All India Kisan Sabha (All India Peasant Union) within the broader context of the Indian national project, as a political force that mobi-lized and organized peasant workers and in relation to other political forces, for instance the Congress Party. For further information see:
•https://www.zmo.de/bibliothek/bestaende/nachlass-dr-petra-heidrich
�https://www.projekt-mida.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Anandita-Bajpai-Introducing-the-MIDA-Archival-Reflexicon_Objectives-and-New-Avenues.pdf

The award is open for MA students from German universities, who are interested or specialize in South Asian History and are looking for a topic for their MA thesis. If current circumstances allow, the archival research should start in September/October 2020. The successful candidate will have multiple opportunities for fruitful conversations with ZMO scholars working in the field of South Asian History. Furthermore, he/she is invited to discuss his/her findings within the framework of the international workshop “Land to the Tiller?” Hopes and Ruins of Agrarian Reform in Africa, Asia and the Middle East (12-13 November 2020, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin). Please send your application (letter of motivation, CV, short statement from your potential MA supervi-sor) to Katrin Bromber: [email protected]

Deadline: 1 June 2020

18/03/2020

Rest in peace, Professor Rothermund, a giant of South Asian history....

Trauer um Prof. Dr. Dietmar Rothermund

Das Südasien-Institut trauert um Südasien-Historiker Prof. Dr. Dietmar Rothermund, welcher am Morgen des 9. März 2020 in Dossenheim verstorben ist. Rothermund studierte Geschichte und Philosophie an den Universitäten in Marburg und München und promovierte 1959 an der University of Pennsylvania.

Einen ausführlichen Nachruf, verfasst von Prof. Dr. Gita Dharampal, können Sie hier lesen:
https://www.sai.uni-heidelberg.de/PDFs/Nachruf_Rothermund.pdf