51st Annual Spalding Symposium on Indian Religions

Programme:
Friday 27 March

8:30 Arrival and registration

9:00 – 9:10 Welcome & Housekeeping

9:10 – 10:00 Keynote 1

Ankur Barua (Cambridge University)

15 min Break

10:15 – 11:45 Panel 1

Karen O’Brien-Kop (KCL): Using Samkhya to query ontological boundaries and mobilise consciousness in the Anthropocene

Rosina Pastore (UGent): Brahman and Cinema: Explaining Vedānta in 20th century North India

11:45 – 13:00 – Lunch

13:00 – 15:15 Panel 2

Nabanjan Maitra (Bard): How to Re(Write) the Veda

Paola M Rossi (Milan): The poet ‘who fashions the boundaries’: Vedic poetry and mapping cosmos

Shivani Bothra (California State: Long Beach): Reimagining Dharma: Jain Migration, Gender, and the Shifting Boundaries of Tradition

15:15 – 15:30 – Break

15:30 – 17:45 Panel 3

Brian Black (Lancaster): From the Margins to the Centre: Rethinking Nāgas in the Mahābhārata

Ayelet Kotler (Leiden): Persian Ramayanas and Mughal Cosmopolitanism

Sinah Kloß (Bonn): Hair, Heat, and Boundaries: Questioning the Material and Sensory Dimensions of the Body in Hindu Suriname

Dinner thereafter 18:45

Saturday 28 March

9:00 – 11:00 Panel 4: Postgraduate Panel

Aamir Kaderbhai (Oxford): The Infinite Mirror: Questioning the Boundary between Reality and Imagination in the Mokṣopāya

Weibing NI (Cambridge): ‘Sita Crosses Kala Pani’: Retelling the Ramayana in the Caribbean

Simon Winant (UGent): Where Othering ends and Smothering begins: how to discuss the ‘Muslim’ merchant Saʽīd/Ṣadīq in Jain chronicles

Ojaswini Shekhawat (Yale): Fantasizing as the (Un)Attainable “Other”: A 17th Century Minor Sanskritist’s Take on the Mughal Harem

11:00 – 11:15 – Break

11:15 – 12:45 Panel 5

Neelima Shukla-Bhatt (Wellesley College): Dancing and Questioning Boundaries: Garbo, the Goddess Worship Ritual of Gujarati Women

Madhumita Sengupta (IIT Gandhinagar): Ashaan Bibi and the Cultural Resonances of Partition in Bengal

12:45 – 14:00 – Lunch

14:00 – 15:30 Panel 6

Mukesh Kumar (Zürich): Fluid Frontiers of Faith: Boundary Crossing in the Ritual Ecology of South Canara

Maharshi Vyas (UNC Chapel Hill): What does it mean to be ‘tribal’? Questioning Identitarian Boundaries through Historical Interactions and Contemporary Lived Religious Realities

15:30 – 15:45 – Break

15:45 – 16:35 Closing Keynote

Prof. Monica Juneja (HCTS, Heidelberg University)

Join us in person for the 51st Annual Spalding Symposium where we dive deep into the fascinating world of Indian Religions. It's a great chance to connect, learn, and share ideas with others who are passionate about this rich cultural and spiritual heritage. Don't miss out on thought-provoking talks and lively discussions!
Theme: Questioning Boundaries

As the Spalding Symposium on Indian Religions moves into its fifty-first rendition, and turns a new corner, we would like to take this opportunity to examine the state of the field of Indian Religions, to see where boundaries are, and where the field might go next.

Questioning a boundary makes one aware of what that boundary is, what purpose it serves, and what it seeks to keep in, and to keep out. Ancient texts, such as the Upaniṣads and the Tripiṭaka, have explored the lines between the perishable and imperishable, the material and immaterial, dhārmika and adhārmika, right and wrong, true and false. Limits are negotiated, policed, contested, and crossed, not only in philosophical, ritual and legal texts, but also in literature, art, performance and even architecture. Boundaries become fluid, and status quos are challenged as ideas, methods and thoughts are applied and re-applied in new contexts.

The scholarly field of Indian Religions has examined the role of boundaries and limits. More recently, scholarship has focused on boundaries of the global north and south, the human and the ecological, and boundaries of religious traditions. We have also seen work that challenges disciplinary boundaries and methodological approaches, and also involves interlocutors, artists, filmmakers and the public.

Where can the field go next? How can and do scholars interact with the digital, the material, and the global? What new approaches may they use? What should the 2025 scholar of Indology and/or Indian Religions be aware of, and what other places can the modern scholar learn from? How can the field become more equitable and open to new approaches and methods? How can the study of Indian Religions maintain its relevancy in a time and place where the Humanities are increasingly under threat? And how can the study of Indian Religions help us deal with the problems of today such as isolation, extremism, post-truthism, intolerance and climate change?

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