February 2024 – April 2024
For this term, we shift our focus to South Asia. As a contested term, research and knowledge production on the region is largely dominated by India or at times, Pakistan and Sri-Lanka. With a massive population, growing economies, large diasporas, huge cultural and social significance, the region is largely ignored (especially at the University of Sheffield). This very short reading list seeks to challenge this and it does so by shifting the focus away from the states to the people. In the first two weeks, we focus slightly on the states as an introduction through minority nationalisms and a critical feminist perspective. Subsequently, this reading list focuses on people (in and of South Asia) and their identities, whether it be a racial, caste-based, gender or digital identity. Every effort has been taken to insure that the readings are from a diverse range of authors and reflect geographical diversity – this has not always been possible and it is noted that countries such as the Maldives, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh have not been centred here. This is only due to the present status of the curator’s knowledge and hopefully this reading club will lead to future discussions that go beyond British politics to being truly international.
Week 1 | Tuesday @ 4:00 PM
“South Asia” from the margins
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📄 JOURNAL ARTICLE: Fazal, Tanweer (2012) Minorities and their nationalism(s): the terms of a discourse in South Asia, South Asian History and Culture, 3:2, 163-176.
Week 2 | Tuesday @ 4:00 PM
The insecure postcolonial states
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📄 JOURNAL ARTICLE: Das, Runa (2010) Colonial legacies, post-colonial (in)securities, and gender(ed) representations in South Asia’s nuclear policies, Social Identities, 16:6, 717-740.
Week 3 | Tuesday @ 4:00 PM
“Race doesn’t apply in South Asia” – are you kidding me?
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📄 JOURNAL ARTICLE: Jayawardene, Sureshi M. (2016) Racialized casteism: Exposing the relationship between race, caste, and colorism through the experiences of Africana people in India and Sri Lanka. Journal of African American Studies 20, no. 3 (2016): 323-345.
Week 4 | Tuesday @ 4:00 PM
No decolonial without queering decoloniality
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📄 JOURNAL ARTICLE: Kang, Akhil (2023) Savarna Citations of Desire: Queer Impossibilities of Inter-Caste Love. Feminist Review, 133(1), 63-78.
Week 5 | Tuesday @ 4:00 PM
The internet is not simply for the states and corporations!
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📄 JOURNAL ARTICLE: Perera, Sachini. (2022) South-based feminist visions for digital media policy in Sri Lanka. Journal of Digital Media & Policy, 13 (1), 57.
Week 6 | Tuesday @ 4:00 PM
Who owns the environment?
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📄 JOURNAL ARTICLE: Bhan, Mona (2018) Jinn, Floods and Resistant Ecological Imaginaries in Kashmir, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 53(47), 67-75.
Race, Empire and Education Collective 