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Please join fellow scholars and faculty for the first annual Rustgi Undergraduate Conference on South Asia at the University at Buffalo. The conference will feature a keynote lecture by Sujatha Gidla, acclaimed author of Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017). We will be hosting undergraduate presenters from institutions located throughout the country who will share their current research on South Asia. Undergraduate scholars based in South Asia will be joining us via Skype.

The first annual Rustgi South Asian Undergraduate Research Conference is made possible by a generous gift from Dr. Vinod Rustgi and his family. The University at Buffalo Department of Anthropology, Department of English, Department of History, Honors College, Office of International Education, and Humanities Institute have provided additional support and funding.

For more information, please contact rustgiconference@gmail.com

FREE and open to the public. Registration required. Click here to register.

Program

Opening Remarks | 8:30 am

Panel 1 | 8:45-9:30 am | Social and Political Currents

• Abhishek Shah (Northwestern), “Approaches to News Production on and from Kashmir”
• Sadique PK (English & Foreign Language University, Hyderabad), “Post-Left Islam: Citizenship Politics and Emerging Muslim Youth Activism in South India”

Panel 2 | 9:45-10:45 am | Literature and Media: Classical and Contemporary Perspectives

• Brigette Meskell (SUNY Brockport), “Escaping the Fire: The Construction of Female Same-Sex Desire and Identity in Hindi Cinema”
• Fatima Afzal (Lahore University of Management Sciences), “Prime Time ‘Akhlaq’: Selling Ethics in the Subcontinent”
• James Batten (UC Boulder), “National Pride, Nukes, and the Meaning of the Mahābhārata”

Coffee Break | 10:45-11:15 am

Panel 3 | 11:15 am-12:15 pm | Health, Medicine, and Policy

• Sailakshmi Senthil Kumar (UC Berkeley), “Lingual Choices”
• John Haeger (Western Michigan), “The Cost of Life: How Healthcare Has Evolved from Patients to Profits”
• Madison Weisend (Marymount Manhattan College), “Exploring Water Scarcity Through the Dynamics of Social Power: The Case of the Thar Desert”

Lunch | 12:15-1:45pm

Panel 4 | 1:45-2:45 pm | Religions, Theory and Practice

• Russell Guilbault (University at Buffalo), Title TBD
• Emily Sadler (UC Boulder), “Queer Hindu Theology and Philosophy and their Social Applications”
• Sharmain Siddiqui (Northwestern), “Semiotics, Representation, and Preservation of Indigenous Unani Human Pulse-Reading Knowledge”

Panel 5 | 2:45-3:45 pm | Art and Diaspora

• Sarah Robinson (Vanderbilt), “Anarcho-Sufism in America: A Musical Analysis of Omar Waqar”
• Courtney Johnson (Ohio State), “The Bifurcated Bride: Gender, Nationalism, and Identity in Amrita Sher-Gil’s The Bride’s Toilet”

Keynote | 4:00 pm | Sujatha Gidla

• Book Signing (until 6pm)

Attendees’ Dinner (7pm)