Category : Faculty

How do you plan for a city that exists for only a few weeks but must support millions of people? That question is at the heart of the Kumbh Mela, one of the world’s largest religious gatherings, and the subject of an interdisciplinary panel organized by the Mittal Institute. Part of Infrastructure in a Time of Flux: Methods, Conditions, and Situations, a November 12-13 symposium curated by Rahul Mehrotra and Dan Borelli at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the panel brings together scholars – including Mittal Institute faculty – to explore the infrastructure, planning, and social systems that make these temporary sacred cities possible. We spoke with Prof. Mehrotra about the symposium, the ideas behind it, and what attendees can expect.

Professor E. Annamalai, who will present this year’s Sangam Tamil Lecture Series, is a distinguished scholar of Tamil and Dravidian linguistics whose career has spanned more than six decades. We spoke with Dr. Annamalai ahead of his September 24 Sangnam Tamil lecture, “Classical Tamil Theories of Likeness to Convey Meaning,” in which he will talk about metaphor and metonymy as presented in our earliest grammar of the Tamil language, the Tolkappiyam.