Past Events

Spring 2019

Parmesh Shahani

April 11, 2019

Parmesh Shahani, director of Godrej India Culture Lab, Mumbai. Through his work with the Godrej IndiaCulture Lab, Parmesh will chronicle what it means to be modern and Indian, while also helping archive a very rapidly changing Indian society. Through his writing and LGBTQ activism, he is inspiring his own as well as other Indian corporations to be LGBTQ inclusive. In both of these he is using jugaad – extreme resourcefulness – reframing paradigms and empowering new ways of seeing and being.

Namita Dharia

February 11, 2019

Namita Dharia, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Rhode Island School of Design. Talk title: "Unruly Urbanism: Gods, Guns and and Real Estate at the Edge of India's Capital"

Meet the SAS alumni

February 2, 2019

Meet the SAS alumni. William Lodge II, Naman Patel, Aziz Sohail.

Spring 2018

Group of women in India sitting by water joined by pigeons
Hyperbolic Heist: The Contemporary Discourse of Gendered Public Safety in India

February 8, 2018

A lecture by Shilpa Phadke, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and Madeleine Haas Russell Visiting Professor, Brandeis University.

Download the event flyer (pdf)
Balls of food and sauce on a table
We are Enjoying Only: Food and Fun in Liberalizing India

March 22, 2018

Professor Amita Baviskar, Institute for Economic Growth, Delhi
Soli Sorabjee Lecture

Download the event flyer (pdf)
Man upside-down mid-jump on a beach
Interdisciplinary Conference, Mazaa: Theorizing Fun, Pleasure and Play in India

March 23, 2018

10 a.m. Introduction

  • Ulka Anjaria (Brandeis)
  • Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria (Brandeis)

10:15 a.m.–12 p.m. Panel 1

  • Krishnendu Ray (NYU), Suffering and Social Theory: Limits of Current Critiques of Food Cultures
  • James Mchugh (USC), The Varieties of Drunk Experience In Early Medieval South Asia
  • Abhay Sardesai (Art India), The Fine Art of Having Fun
  • Discussant: Amita Baviskar (IEG, Delhi)

12:30–2:15 p.m. Panel 2

  • Shilpa Phadke (TISS, Mumbai), Dull Jills: Women, Work and Fun on the Streets of Mumbai
  • Brian Horton (Brown), The Police and the Policed: Queer Crossings in a Bombay Bathroom
  • Kareem Khubchandani (Tufts), Dancing Against The Law: Critical Moves in Bangalore’s Queer Nightlife
  • Discussant: Pascal Menoret (Brandeis)

2:30–4:15 p.m. Panel 3

  • Arti Sandhu (U of Cincinnati), The Guilty Pleasures of Saas-Bahu Style
  • Camille Frazier (UCLA), “Money Doesn’t Fascinate Anymore”: Food Cultivation as Productive Leisure Among Bangalore’s Middle Class
  • Ajay Gehlawat (Sonoma State), It’s All About Loving Yourself: The Difficult, Carefree Pleasures of Popular Hindi Cinema
  • Discussant: Gowri Vijayakumar (Brandeis)

4:15-4:45 p.m. Closing Discussion

Download the event flyer (pdf)
Harjant Gill

April 24, 2018

Previous Years