The digital version of the Mittal Institute’s 2016–2020 Arts Program Report has just been released! The report highlights the Mittal Institute’s Visiting Artist Fellows from 2016–2020, as well as the new developments in the Program on Conservation of Culture. Check out the digital version here to learn more. Below, read Professor Jinah Kim’s introduction to the report and the Arts Program at the Mittal Institute.
This January, Neha Hiranandani will join us in Mumbai to discuss her recently published book, Girl Power: Indian Women Who Broke the Rules, with Professor Jacqueline Bhabha of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Centering on the challenges young women still face when it comes to access to education and health while negotiating with the societal expectations, Hiranandani and Bhabha will discuss the stories of “rebel women” in India — pondering the factors that contribute to the success of those who break the mold, against the odds.
Recently, Professor Tarun Khanna — Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at the Harvard Business School and Director of the Mittal Institute — traveled to Bengaluru to give the D.D. Kosambi Lecture, “A Paean to Learning to ‘See’” at the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences. The talk was structured around the use of basic analytics to better “see” some overlooked regularities in human behavior — drawing on examples from recent Indian history, including the Partition of British India in 1947 and the annual Maha Kumbh Mela religious gathering, and from contemporary social phenomena.
The Mittal Institute is sending our deepest condolences to Sir Fazle Hasan Abed’s family and friends in his passing. He will be warmly remembered and solely missed. Abed Bhai, Founder and Chairperson of Bangladesh development organization BRAC, gave the Mittal Institute’s 2014 Mahindra Lecture, providing an enlightening account of the extraordinary accomplishments of the global organization. “Hope is an element in which people take action, and energize themselves out of poverty,” he said.
Sakshi Gupta is an accomplished sculptor and mixed media artist from India and one of the Mittal Institute’s Fall 2019 Visiting Artist Fellows. Her practice frames human conditions of understanding, progressing, suffering, and halting due to a lack or gain of knowledge, will, or energy. Her work grapples with the need to achieve a balance between life’s inherent polarities, exhibiting this by utilizing materials often considered waste or ordinary. She’s dedicated her life to an immersive journey through form and material, toward the non-material and experiential.
The Crossroads Emerging Leaders Program began in 2017, a joint effort between the Harvard Business School Club of the GCC, HBS Professors Tarun Khanna and Karim Lakhani, and the Mittal Institute. This year, the Crossroads Emerging Leaders Program received 6,093 total applications from 97 countries spanning the Middle East, Africa, Central Asia, Latin America, South Asia, and US students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU). Of the candidates, 4,263 were selected to move onto the next round, which consisted of a fully funded selection of interdisciplinary courses offered online on HarvardX through Crossroads’ partnership with edX.
Symposia dedicated to the art and culture of early modern Nepal come around only once in a generation. And the atmosphere at the Nepal Mandala in an Early Modern South Asia symposium last week, run by Jinah Kim (Harvard University) and Todd Lewis (College of the Holy Cross), reflected the rarity of this meeting. The symposium brought together international experts on the history, culture, and societies of the “Nepal Mandala” — or the Kathmandu Valley — to present papers on the region’s place in early modern South Asia.
Each year, the Mittal Institute holds the Seed for Change competition, welcoming student projects that impact societal, economic, and environmental issues in India and Pakistan. Our latest digital report on the program is out now, highlighting the work of the winning teams. Click here to read it!
This week, the Nepal Mandala Symposium will take an in-depth look at Nepal’s artistic heritage, its place in Asia’s artistic ecosystem, and the continuing practice of Indic Buddhist traditions. Dipti Sherchan, a graduate student at the Department of Anthropology in the University of Illinois at Chicago, will join the panel “Nepal Mandala in the Intra- and Trans-Regional Context.” We sat down with her to learn more about her expertise in the anthropology of state and art, and the emergence of the Juddha Kala Pathshala art school in Nepal — a unique and one-of-a-kind cultural institution in Kathmandu.
Earlier this week, we were joined by Karthika Naïr, author and poet, for an in-depth discussion on her latest book, Until the Lions. In the book, Naïr retells the story of the Mahabharata through the embodied voices of women and marginal characters. In conversation with Professor Parimal Patil, Professor of Religion and Indian Philosophy at Harvard University, and with the audience, Naïr brought these voices to life.
The Mittal Institute is pleased to announce its newest donor, Kushagra Nayan Bajaj, an Indian businessman who is the Chairman of the Bajaj Group, the Chairman and Managing Director of Bajaj Hindusthan Limited, and Chairman of Bajaj Corp Limited. His support will create a new, upcoming visiting research fellowship at the Mittal Institute to deepen the teaching and research on significant cultural issues related to South Asia. We spoke with him to learn more about his background and his interest in the Mittal Institute.
Recently, the Mittal Institute hosted a book workshop with Dr. Mariam Chughtai, Babar Ali Fellow at the Mittal Institute and Associate Dean and Assistant Professor at the LUMS School of Education in Lahore, Pakistan, to curate feedback on her manuscript currently in progress. In a book workshop, a professor hosts a junior scholar and invites other senior scholars from the relevant field to come together and provide feedback on the junior scholar’s developing book manuscript.