Saturday, March 9
Sterling Memorial Library Lecture Room
9:00 am – 9:15 Opening Remarks
Andrew Quintman (Yale University) & Sara Shneiderman (Yale University)
9:15 am – 11:00 Disciplinary Histories
How has the study of the Himalaya been guided by disciplinary concerns; how have those concerns changed over time? How have institutional configurations shaped scholarly production? How have these disciplinary and institutional arrangements affected our knowledge of sub-regions of the Himalaya? How have you seen these conditions change over the course of your career and how does the future look from your vantage point?
Chair: Kalyanakrishnan “Shivi” Sivaramakrishnan (Yale University)
Kurtis Schaeffer (University of Virginia)
Kamal Bawa (University of Massachusetts, Boston)
Kathryn March (Cornell University)
Geoffrey Samuel (Cardiff University)
Respondent: Peter Perdue (Yale University)
11:00 – 11:15 break
11:15 – 12:45 pm Geographies and Scales of Connectivity
How have the Himalaya been mapped across disciplines and over time? What kind of boundaries have been established and how are they contested? How do different modes of geographical representation bring into focus different scales of knowledge? What is at stake in such productions for different knowledge communities (local, scholarly, general public)? How can we establish new forms of connection across geographic and disciplinary boundaries?
Chair: Anil Chitrakar (Himalayan Climate Initiative)
David Zurick (Eastern Kentucky University)
Joëlle Smadja (CNRS, Paris)
David Germano (University of Virginia)
Respondent: Shafqat Hussain (Trinity College)
12:45 – 1:45 lunch
Viewing Tibetan thangkas in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, mezzanine
1:45 – 3:15 Identities
How has the notion of “Himalayan identity,” broadly defined, been understood across the disciplines? What specific forms of identity have been at the forefront of disciplinary investigations: gender, political, national, religious? How are identities understood within particular sub-regions or communities? What forms of subjectivity are these linked to? How does transnational mobility in the past and present challenge understandings of ethnic and national identity as commonly defined?
Chair: Jeremy Spoon (Portland State University)
Mahendra Lawoti (Western Michigan University)
Chris Vasantkumar (Hamilton College)
Geoff Childs (Washington University in St. Louis)
Respondent: Robert Barnett (Columbia University)
3:15 – 3:30 break
3:30 – 5:00 Everyday Religion and the Environment
What do the Himalaya and its people teach us about the study of everyday or lived religion? What does the examination of everyday religion teach us about the Himalaya? How do these questions or their potential answers relate to policies that aim to promote environmental sustainability?
Chair: Mahendra Lama (Jawaharal Nehru University)
Georgina Drew (The New School)
David Holmberg (Cornell University)
Todd Lewis (Holy Cross)
Respondent: Elizabeth Allison (California Institute of Integral Studies)
Saturday, March 9
Luce Hall Auditorium
5:45 pm – 7:00 Keynote panel: High Asian Connections
How and why is the study of the Himalaya relevant to non-specialists, particularly other Asian Studies scholars engaged in debates over the nature of borders, center/periphery dynamics, and transregional connections?
Moderator: Mark Turin (Yale University)
Charles Ramble (EPHE, Sorbonne)
James Scott (Yale University)
Sunday, March 10
Luce Hall Room 203
9:00 am – 10:30 Visual and Literary Representations
What do we see when we look at the Himalaya? What kinds of strategies and techniques have people in the Himalaya used over time to represent themselves, their aspirations, beliefs, identities, etc? How have different disciplines emphasized specific forms of self-representation in their own processes of scholarly representation? What kinds of materials and objects come to the fore and shape both scholarly and popular understandings of the region? What kinds of links or gaps exist between disciplinary approaches to visual, literary, linguistic representation?
Chair: Paul Draghi (Yale University)
Michael Hutt (SOAS)
Rob Linrothe (Northwestern University)
Tsering Shakya (University of British Columbia)
Respondent: Mimi Yiengpruksawan (Yale University)
10:30 – 10:45 break
10:45 – 12:15 pm States and Borders
How have different disciplines recognized, or not, the importance of political histories for understanding dynamics of change across the Himalaya? When have investigations of specific polities yielded productive inquiries and when have such boundaries been limiting? How have people, ideas, and goods moved across boundaries over time, and what kind of scholarly frameworks do we need to understand such movements? Is there value in considering an unbounded trans-regional Himalaya as a unit of analysis; what is gained or lost?
Chair: Eklabya Sharma (ICIMOD)
Saul Mullard (EPHE, Sorbonne)
Ken Bauer (Dartmouth College)
William Sax (Heidelberg University)
Respondent: Gunnel Cederlof (Uppsala University)
12:30—2:00 Lunch & Concluding Discussion