The 23rd Annual Solanki Lecture: The Green Transition and Artificial Intelligence with Akhil Gupta
The Solanki Lecture will be held in person in the College of Professional and Continuing Education (CPaCE) building
Thursday, April 23rd, 2026
We will be having a traditional Indian dinner served starting at 6:00pm. The lecture will begin at 7:00pm
(CANCELLED) A Conversation with Nusrat S. Chowdhury: Towhidi Janata and the Vicissitudes of Embodied Politics in Bangladesh
WE APOLOGIZE, BUT THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED! We will keep you updated if this event has been rescheduled.
“Towhidi janata” is a term that fuses the Arabic word “towhid,” the oneness of Allah, with “janata,” the pan-South Asian term for “the people,” “the crowd,” or “the mob.” Based on textual and ethnographic research, this presentation explores the complex and shifting nature of embodied politics in Bangladesh after the 2024 uprising.
Nusrat S Chowdhury is professor of anthropology at Amherst College and is interested in practices of popular sovereignty and communicative politics. She’s the author of Paradoxes of the Popular: Crowd Politics in Bangladesh, and several articles on political aesthetics and popular politics.
This event will take place at the Liberal Arts 4 building in Lecture Hall 120 at CSULB on Thursday, February 26th, 2026 @5:30pm.
A Conversation with Devika Rege
Devika Rege is the author of the novel Quarterlife, which won the Book of the Year Award at the Mathrubhumi International Festival of Letters and the Ramnath Goenka Sahithya Samman (literature prize).
Join us for a conversation and Q&A with Devika Rege led by Professor Norbert Schürer (CSULB, English)
This event will take place via zoom on Wednesday, December 3rd 6:30pm PST/Thursday, December 4th 8:00am IST.
CANCELLED. A Conversation with Zirwat Chowdhury: “East India Stock”
WE APOLOGIZE, BUT THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED! We will keep you updated if this event has been rescheduled.
This talk explores Joshua Reynolds’ portrait of an East India Company family. Foregrounding the portrait’s representation of childcare, the talk elucidates the family’s accumulation of “stock” through the gendered and racialized labor of social reproduction in South Asia.
Zirwat Chowdhury is Assistant Professor of Art History at UCLA. Her work explores the interconnected histories of art and visual culture in Britain and South Asia, in the 18th and 19th centuries.
This event will take place at the Design building in Lecture Hall 112 at CSULB on Monday, November 17th @5:30pm.
A Book Club Discussion, “Quarterlife: A Novel” by Devika Rege
2025 Annual Solanki Lecture: Indian History After Climate Change: Conch-Shells in Myth and Life with Dipesh Chakrabarty
The Conch-Shell occupies a special place in Hindu and Buddhist religious systems, from creation myths to everyday religious rituals. Global warming, however, has significantly affected the supply of these shells. This talk addresses the question of how one might bring together into the same analytic frame the biological-evolutionary history and the human-religious history of this creature of the sea.
Dipesh Chakrabarty is the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor of History and South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. He is a founding member of the editorial collective of Subaltern Studies and a founding editor of Postcolonial Studies. His books include Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, 2000/2008), The Calling of History: Sir Jadunath Sarkar and His Empire of Truth (Chicago, 2015), The Climate of History in a Planetary Age (Chicago, 2021), and One Planet, Many Worlds: The Climate Parallax (Brandeis, 2023). Dr. Chakrabarty has received honorary doctorates from the University of London (2010), the University of Antwerp (2011) and the École Normale Supérieure (2021). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.
The Solanki Lecture will be held in person in the College of Professional and Continuing Education (CPaCE) building
Friday, April 25th, 2025
Click this link to watch the full 22nd Annual Solanki Lecture:
A Conversation with Ranjan Ghosh
A Conversation with Allan Punzalan Isaac
The Yadunandan Center for India Studies presents:
Allan Punzalan Isaac with “Atopic Futures: Philippine-based Artists’ Use of the Otherworldly to Frame Social Justices Issues”
Dr. Issac’s talk will be the first of our new series that explores how we might reconceptualize the study of Asia and its diasporas. In this talk, he will focus on Philippine artists’s use of the Otherworldly to articulate environmental crises and social justice issues. Dr. Isaac uses these works of art to explore how we might reimagine research about Asia in a global era.
Dr. Allan Punzalan Isaac is Professor of American Studies and of English and Associate Dean of the Humanities at Rutgers University. He is a founding member and served as co-Director of the Global Asias Initiative at Rutgers.
This event will be hosted at the Karl Anatol Center, CSULB
Thursday, February 13th, 2025 at 5:30pm
A Conversation about Italian Neo-Realism and Satyajit Ray
A Conversation with Aamina Ahmad
The Yadunandan Center for India Studies at Cal State Long Beach is proud to present:A Conversation with Aamina AhmadAamina Ahmad’s first novel, The Return of Faraz Ali, was named a notable New York Times and National Public Radio pick for 2023 and went on to win the Art Siedenbaum Los Angeles Times First Book Prize, The Writers’ Guild of Great Britain First Book Prize, and the Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize.Aamina Ahmad is a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, she has been a recipient of a Stegner Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, and a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award. She is also the author of a play, The Dishonored. She teaches creative writing at the University of Minnesota.The event will take place on Zoom on March 21st at 6:00PM
To RSVP, please scan the code on the poster below. When you do, we will send you the Zoom information and a reminder.
