In celebration of its 50th anniversary, the American Institute of Indian Studies will be hosting three two-day conferences that would provide an opportunity for U.S. based scholars to interact with scholars at the Indian institutions that provide research affiliations for AIIS fellows. These conferences will be funded by the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs through the Council of American Overseas Research Centers. Faculty from AIIS member colleges and universities were invited to submit proposals for the conferences to be held at the AIIS centers in Gurgaon and New Delhi between December 2012 and January 2014. The purpose of the initiative is to showcase, in India, AIIS’s deep commitment to India-focused research and to provide an opportunity for dialogue between U.S.-based and India-based scholars. By involving scholars at institutions with which AIIS fellows and faculty members affiliate, AIIS would like to acknowledge the important role of Indian institutions and scholars in hosting AIIS researchers, and to deepen and strengthen relationships between AIIS member institutions and affiliate Indian institutions.
The three conferences will be:
The Long 1980s: Recovering a ‘Lost Decade’ is being organized by Sumathi Ramaswamy of Duke University, Karin Zitzewitz of Michigan State University, Rebecca Brown at Johns Hopkins University and Arvind Rajagopal of New York University and will be held in December 2012.
Regions and Regionalism in India: Past Cases and Present Opportunities is being organized by Benjamin Cohen of the University of Utah and Sumit Ganguly of Indiana University and will be held in the summer of 2013.
Political Imaginaries: Rethinking India’s Twentieth Century is being organized by Manu Goswami of New York University and Mrinalini Sinha of the University of Michigan and will be held in December 2013.