Senior Faculty Mentors
Faculty from a range of disciplines and areas of expertise will serve as mentors. In 2025, the senior faculty mentors will include:
- Laura Brueck (convener; South Asian and Comparative Literature, Northwestern University)
- Roanne Kantor (English, Stanford University)
- Arsalan Khan (Anthropology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville)
- Radha Kumar (History, Syracuse University)
- Philip Lutgendorf (Hindi/Modern Indian Studies, University of Iowa)
- Rini Bhattacharya Mehta (Comparative & World Literature/Religion, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
- Smitha Radhakrishnan (Sociology, Wellesley College)
- Llerena Searle (Anthropology, University of Rochester)
- Anand Yang (History, University of Washington)
Schedule
All meetings will take place at the Madison Concourse Hotel
- Tuesday evening, October 21, 7:00 to 8:30 pm: Secrets of Publishing: Introductions and Q&A regarding publishing, next steps, etc. Several faculty mentors with experience in recruiting manuscripts for presses and in publishing their own books will participate. Tea, coffee, cheese & crackers, and cookies will be served.
- Wednesday morning, October 22, 8:30 am to 12:15 pm (with a coffee break from 10:15-10:30 am): We will divide into three groups of 8 authors and 2-3 mentors. Each project will be discussed for 23-25 minutes. In advance, everyone will read all of the materials for their group. For each 23-25-minute segment, one participant will make a 3-5-minute presentation on someone else’s project, and then the other participants will join in to discuss the project—except the project’s author, who is not allowed to speak. The author of the project under discussion can only listen, take notes, and record if desired, how their project is being understood, misunderstood, stretched, queried, critiqued, and praised by knowledgeable peers with closely related interests but working in varying theoretical perspectives, disciplines, settings, and time periods.
- Lunch break (on one’s own): 12:15 to 1:45 pm
- Wednesday afternoon, 1:45 to 5:30 pm (with a coffee break from 3:30-3:45): Each author is given a 25-minute time slot to respond to the more important queries, issues, and suggestions raised in the morning, and, most important, to seek feedback or further discussion of areas of their project with which they recognize they are having difficulty.
- Wednesday evening at 6:30 pm: AIIS will host all participants at a group dinner at the Maharani Indian Restaurant, 380 W. Washington Street (several blocks from the Concourse Hotel) (final restaurant choice to be confirmed)
Conversations can carry over into Thursday, Friday and Saturday at the South Asia Conference!
