Imagining Alternative Modernities: Interventions from the Balkans and South Asia

We are excited to announce the interdisciplinary conference, "Imagining Alternative Modernities: Interventions from the Balkans and South Asia", which will take place at The Ohio State University, Columbus, October 9-11, 2014. The conference completes and complements a series of interdisciplinary activities in 2013-14, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation through the John E. Sawyer Seminars on the Comparative Study of Cultures grant program. For more information on the seminar, please visit: sawyer.osu.edu.

On the surface, the Balkans and South Asia might seem to have little in common. However, despite many specific differences, they share similar dilemmas of linguistic, religious, cultural, and ethno-national complexity, similar turbulent political developments associated with imperial, post-colonial, and Cold War legacies, and a similar diversity of responses to these historical and contemporary challenges. Both areas have seen a mixing of people through migratory settlement, conquest, contact, and trade. But both have also experienced periods of reaction to cultural hybridity: a radical unmixing of people through partition and population exchange. The impact of these upheavals is seen in the direct violence of war and devastation, but also through crises on the levels of language, religion, and other modes of culture and human creative activity. The unique yet similar issues within each region compel us towards a comparative approach that will offer a transnational perspective on the intersection of language, religion, culture, and nationalism.

We thus invite proposals for paper presentations from any disciplinary or interdisciplinary perspective within the humanities and social sciences addressing one or more of the following themes in the Balkans or in South Asia, or comparatively between the two regions: 

1. Violence, Gender, and Human Rights 

2. Nation, Religion, Language, and Secularism 

3. Minorities, State, Language, and Citizenship 

4. Postcolonial and Postsocialist Perspectives on Neoliberalism

Additionally, selected papers will be included in a collection of essays resulting from the conference.

Graduate students are encouraged to participate. Limited funding is available for student lodging.

Please send a 350-word abstract in PDF format and brief (one paragraph maximum) bio to sawyerseminar@osu.edu by Monday March 17, 2014 (11:59pm). Notifications of acceptance will be sent by May 1, 2014 and the program will be announced by June 1, 2014.