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
2024 Annual Solanki Lecture: How Inclusive is “Inclusive Innovation”?
Parking:
If you need parking (for off campus visitors), please follow the directions below.
We have reserved spots for you in the Research Foundation Parking Lot, which is across the street and half a block east from the lecture venue. There is also a campus map (where the lecture venue and the parking lot are circled) and directions to the campus attached to this note.
Once you arrive at the Research Foundation parking lot, please use the CENTER LANE pull up to the automated kiosk in visitor entrance (again, please use the CENTER LANE) and do the following when you arrive at the kiosk:
1. Press “D” (right side of screen) to enter code.
2. Enter code 6944201 using keyboard numbers (below screen).
3. Press “D” (right side of screen) to open gate.
4. Pull into lot and walk to the venue.
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.
Rousing A Nation Across Nations: Embodied Protests and Tibetan National Mobilization
Tsewang Dolma, a Tibetan refugee, stood unwavering in her commitment to the hunger strike unto death during the 2015 campaign in Delhi, India. Despite the ensuing health issues, she harbored no regrets after its forced conclusion. The true triumph of that campaign lay in the surge of nationalistic passion it stirred across the Tibetan community. In her words, “That is why I took part in the hunger strike. Even if I were to die, the decision would not go to waste. More Tsewangs would be born.”
In 2012, when Soepa Rinpoche engaged in self-immolation in Golog county, Tibet, his parting words echoed the generative death philosophy shared by Tsewang: “I am grateful to Pawo Thupten Ngodup and all other Tibetan heroes who have sacrificed their lives for Tibet and for the reunification of the Tibetan people … I am giving away my body as an offering of light to chase away the darkness.” His sacrifice ignited a similar wave of nationalistic fervor, resonating both in Tibet and among the Tibetan diaspora.
For individuals like Tsewang Dolma and Soepa Rinpoche, political action transcends mere resistance against a hostile state or a desperate plea to supranational bodies like the United Nations. It also serves the purpose of uniting a transnational Tibetan citizenry, comprising of Tibetan refugees in South Asia, as well as Tibetans in Tibet and other parts of the world. Through their collective memory, imagination, and ongoing sacrifices, a deterritorialized Tibetan nation emerges.
Join us on Tuesday, November 28 at 6:00 PM over Zoom where Ishani Dasgupta will share her research based on 30 months of fieldwork amongst the Tibetan refugee communities and settlements in India. She has worked closely with grassroots political organizations, and studied their culture of resistance. Her work has been supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the American Institute of Indian Studies. She has presented her research widely, both in academic forums and in policy venues. She remains committed to bringing refugee voices to the forefront of critical discussions about refugee policies and rehabilitation practices.
Fighting Freedom Inc.: Imagining Individual Freedom Beyond Global Capitalism in New Indian Literature and Culture
Join us October 30th at 5:30 PM In the Antatol Center! Where Dr. Mangharam will draw on her newest work, which explores the ways in which lineages of liberation remain present in a wide range of texts in South Asia including the Dalit memoir, film, and the realist novel, works that offer fuller notions of autonomy and agency than those that appear in conventional imaginaries of freedom
2023 Annual Solanki Lecture: In the Realm of Untamed Waters – Thoughts on the Deep Ecology of the Ganges Delta
Please see attached flyer for the Annual Solanki Lecture with Sudipta Sen on April 17.
Reception/Dinner will start at 6pm and lecture at 7pm.
Scan the RSVP code in the flyer to register for free.
Reading Women, Translating Cultures—a discussion on Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand
The Yadunandan Center for India Studies is proud to present a talk by
Pravina Cooper and Jason Grunebaum :
“Reading Women, Translating Cultures—a discussion on Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand”
Jason Grunebaum teaches Hindi and literary translation at the University of Chicago. translations from Hindi include Uday Prakash’s The Girl with the Golden Parasol, The Walls of Delhi, and, with Ulrike Stark, Manzoor Ahtesham’s The Tale of the Missing Man. He also helped establish the Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation, the first prize for literature in translation from South Asia.15).
The conversation will take place on Zoom on February 16th at 6:00 PM.
Click the poster to Join or the link below, see you there!
