The CASAS workshop is coming up soon – this Thursday and Friday at York U! In addition to the panels and roundtables, there will also be a keynote address by Yasmin Saikia, a film screening, social gatherings, and we will be launching our first working paper series based on last year’s workshop. Join us for the full two days or drop in for any of the sessions that interest you.
Don’t forget to register by emailing sargyork@yorku.ca
See you soon!
Check out our updated program including newly added presentations here: https://casasw2015.wordpress.com/workshop-program/
Visit the logistics page for more information on registering for the workshop, accessibility, and directions https://casasw2015.wordpress.com/logistics/
Two weeks to go!
Race and Pedagogy – Thursday February 26th, 2:45 – 4:15pm
As academics engaged in research and teaching about racialized bodies, spaces and histories, we often find ourselves located within ‘Area Studies’, ‘Ethnic Studies’ and/or ‘Development Studies’ – disciplines entangled in the racialized politics of knowledge production in the service of the historical and contemporary development of colonialism and imperialism. Even as we aim to challenge the operation of colonial and racial logics in the classroom, these logics continue to mediate how we teach and learn about indigeneity, diaspora, race, migration and multiculturalism. Our fraught relationships with these disciplines inspired us to convene this roundtable to discuss the potentials, limits and challenges of teaching, researching and learning about race and colonialism within the context of the Canadian academy. We envision the roundtable as a space to consider critical connections between area studies, diaspora studies, critical race studies and indigenous studies. We will engage with the following questions:
Roundtable panelists:
Cyndy Baskin, Social Work, Ryerson University
Pablo Idahosa, African Studies, Development Studies, Political Science, York University
Aaliya Khan, Communication Studies and Political Science, York University
Nishant Upadhyay, Social and Political Thought, York University
Chair: Omme-Salma Rahemtullah, York University
Masala Militia Friday: An Exploratory Panel Examining Issues in South Asian Activism – Friday February 27th,
3:30 – 5:00pm
Masala Militia will be hosting a unique roundtable that briefly investigates the kaleidoscope of nuance and relevant challenges in regards to south asian activism in the western context.
When we say nuance, we ask, what are the facets of south asian activism? How do you stay true to your self while fighting injustice in the south Asian community? How do you navigate your politics when you are in a traditional conservative desi crowd? Do you flaunt your queerness, or subvert it ninja style?
Our esteemed panelists will speak to their experiences of activism in spatial settings like Toronto, New York, London and Dilli (India). This roundtable will be moderated by Raisa and Nish (Pandora Roxstar) of Masala Militia.
Roundtable Panelists
ASAM AHMAD
Asam Ahmad is a multidisciplinary writer, poet, scholar and community organizer. He has been actively involved in student, queer and social justice movements locally and nationally for the past 10 years. He is a co-founder of the It Gets Fatter Project, a body-positivity project for fat people of color. His writing and poetry have appeared in CounterPunch, Briarpatch magazine, Shameless Magazine, Now Magazine, Black Girl Dangerous and Killing Trayvons: An Anthology of American Violence. He still doesn’t know if he’s desi or what that even means anymore, but is passionate about exploring this question and connecting with other South Asians. He is a tumblr, dim sum and reading addict, and is passionate about making the world a fatter place.
TARA ATLURI
Dr. Tara Atluri-holds a Doctorate of Philosophy in Sociology from York University in Toronto, Canada. She is a Lecturer at Guelph-Humber University and the Ontario College of Art and Design University. Dr. Atluri most recently held the position of post-doctoral researcher working under the supervision of Dr. Engin Isin at the Open University in the United Kingdom, as part of Oecumene: Citizenship After Orientalism, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. http://www.oecumene.eu/
Recent peer reviewed academic publications include: Atluri, Tara. “Is Torture Part of Your Social Network?” The Žižek Media Studies Reader. Ed. Matthew Flisfeder and Louis Paul Willis. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 241-257. “The Young and the Restless: The Delhi gang
rape, “youth,” and precarious feminisms.” Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Memory. Special Issue: Violence, Youth, and Memory. Volume 9. Issue 3.M. Nijawin, Duygu Guland Kamal Arora. Taylor and Francis, 2014. 361-379. Atluri, Tara. “The Prerogative of the Brave: Hijras and sexual citizenship after Orientalism. Citizenship Studies, Volume 16, Numbers 5-6, 1 August 2012 , pp. 721-736(16) Atluri, Tara. “Where’s Omar? Where is Justice?” continent. 1.1 (2011): 33-41.Online Journal. http://www.continentcontinent.cc/index.php/continent/article/view/8
Tara Atluri has also worked with various feminists, activists, and arts based organizations transnationally. She most recently performed as part of Cabaret Tolle with Studio 303 in Montreal and has an active artistic praxis that includes performance art, public art installations, and creative writing. Her artistic praxis is often a means of posing political and philosophical questions. http://www.studio303.ca/studio303/en/events/events–
14-15/tolle15/
SHAUNGA TAGORE
Shaunga Tagore is a performance artist, astrologer and community organizer by day, and burlesque superqueero spirit woman by night. She is the co-creator and co-curator of “Unapologetic Burlesque: Queer. Anti-Racist. Consensual. Not Your Average Burlesque.” She is currently developing her first one-woman-show, titled The Erasable Woman, based on a collection of poetry she wrote for her master’s thesis at York University.
KRITTIKA GHOSH
Krittika has been working in the Social Service Sector in both the US and in Canada for the past 15 years. Her extensive work in the South Asian community includes addressing issues such as violence against women, domestic workers rights, post 9/11 hate crimes against South Asians and Muslims, as a program manager in the public health sector managing the first diabetes management project in the Bangladeshi community in New York City. Krittika has worked as a grassroots community organizer, trainer, program manager, board member and advocate for agencies ranging from Sakhi for South Asian Women, Manavi, Workers Awaaz, Andolan, The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Council of Agencies Serving South Asians.
Krittika’s expertise on the issue of Violence against Women stems from her extensive work with immigrant communities ranging from direct services, to community engagement, organizing and program management. She is the co-founder of the Shakti Peer Group in New York City. The group is a peer engagement model in response to Violence against Women in South Asian communities.
She is currently a Senior Coordinator of the Violence Against Women’s Project at the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants. She has graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology and Women’s Studies from Simmons, College, Boston, and with a Master’s Degree in Gender Studies from the London School of Economics, UK. She has also been recognized for her work with women and newcomer communities by the City of New York and the Filipino Women’s Network amongst others.
In her free time Krittika is the ultimate Bollywood gossip queen and loves to lose herself in a good novel.
The workshop program/schedule is now available online: https://casasw2015.wordpress.com/workshop-program/
To register, email sargyork@yorku.ca. Free and open to all!
The CASAS workshop is free and open to all. Please register by emailing your full name, institutional affiliation (optional), any dietary restrictions, and accessibility requests by February 25th, 2015 to sargyork@yorku.ca. The workshop program will be posted shortly.
Love and Hate in South Asia: Rethinking humanity after 1971
Keynote address by Yasmin Saikia
Critical Approaches to South Asian Studies Workshop, York University
February 26- 27, 2015
Remembered experiences of violence, humiliation, and loss suffered in the 1971 war of Bangladesh provide potent materials for rethinking a new narrative bonding victim and perpetrator communities in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. Using the war as my entry point, I explore survivors oral narratives to understand how love for nation and hate toward their perceived enemies created and revealed the distances with others to violate them. More than four decades later, survivors – men and women from Bangladesh and Pakistan – search for a human identity beyond national labels for imagining history in the subcontinent that is discontinuous but interconnected. The “narrative hospitality” (Ricoeur, 1992) of victims and perpetrators exchanging memories for self-recognition and intersubjective relationship with others suggests a possibility of recognizing and coexisting with a variety of others in memory. The quest of survivors is not to find identity, but to create a common ground signaling an awareness of human connections for achieving true human freedom in the sub-continent.
More info: https://casasw2015.wordpress.com/keynote-yasmin-saikia/
We are happy to announce that our keynote speaker for the 2015 Critical Approaches to South Asian Studies Workshop is Yasmin Saikia!
Professor Yasmin Saikia is the Hardt-Nickachos Chair in Peace Studies at the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict and a Professor of History in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies at Arizona State University. Her research and teaching interests invoke a dynamic transnational and interdisciplinary dialogue situated at the intersection of history, culture, and religion. With a specific focus on contestations and accommodations in South Asia between local, national, and religious identities, she examines the Muslim experience in India, Pakistan, and Bangaldesh, and the discourse of nonviolence alongside the practice of violence against women and vulnerable groups.
Selected Publications:
2015 Critical Approaches to South Asian Studies Workshop: Questions of Method in South Asian Studies 