Venue: CGIS South Concourse, 1730 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA
Conference Program
Day 2: November 30, 2022
8:30 am: Tea and Registration
9:00 am: Plenary: Ian Talbot, Mittal Institute, Harvard University, USA, and Southampton University, UK, “Forests, Climate Change and Politics in Pakistan: Local Struggles, Global Connections in North-West Pakistan”
9:30 – 10:45 am: Panel 6: Postcolonial Predicaments
Chair: Fahd Humayun, Tufts University, USA
Douglas Hill, University of Otago, New Zealand, “Water, Climate and Agriculture: A Multi-scalar Analysis of the Indus Basin and Its Contribution to Post-colonial Pakistan”
Erum Sattar, Tufts University, USA, “Water: Too Little and Too Much—Living in an Era of Disruption of the Water Cycle and Its Impacts”
Hashim Ali, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA, “Students Strike Back: Youth Life and the Promise of Post-Colonial Pakistan”
Sana Iqbal, Institute of Ismaili Studies, UK, “Geography, Governance and Gender: Lives of Minority Ethnic Women and the Informal Economy in Karachi”
10:45 am – 12:00 pm: Panel 7: Reimagining Education
Chair: Maria Khwaja, Cambridge University, UK
Liaquat Channa, Mittal Institute, Harvard University, USA, “‘English Fever’ in Pakistan: Mapping Past, Present and Future of Language in Public Education”
Saulat Pervez, International Institute of Islamic Thought, USA, “School Classifications in Pakistan: The Case of English-Medium Private Schools for the New Middle Class”
Mariam Chughtai, National Curriculum Council/Mittal Institute, Harvard University, Pakistan, “Language Policy in Pakistan: Reproducing Social Class through English and Urdu Medium Schools”
Khadija Amer, Harvard Graduate School of Education, USA, “Citizenship beyond the Hidden Curriculum: Reintroducing Civic Education in Pakistan”
12:00 – 1:00 pm: Lunch and Address by Sumbul Siddiqui, Mayor, Cambridge, MA
1:00 – 2:15 pm: Panel 8: Pakistan’s Political Parties
Chair: Christopher Clary, University at Albany, USA
Johann Chacko, SOAS, University of London, UK, “Partisans of the Divine Republic: Pakistan’s Religious Parties Since 1947”
Mariam Mufti, University of Waterloo, Canada, “Candidate-Party Linkages in Pakistan”
Sahar Shafqat, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, USA, “Opposition Parties: Contrasting the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf and Pakistan Democratic Movement”
2:15 – 3:45 pm: Panel 9: Media and Its Discontents
Chair: Beena Sarwar, Emerson College, USA
Omar Quraishi, Former Editor/Media Consultant, Pakistan, “The Advent of New Tech and Social Media & Pakistani Politics”
Narmeen Ijaz, Indiana University Bloomington, USA, “Pakistan Under the Western Gaze: Documentary Films about Local Issues by Global Media Conglomerates”
Madison Young, Syracuse University, USA, “Death by Freedom of the Press: Fatal Retaliation in South Asia”
Khurram Nawaz Sheikh, Indiana University Bloomington, USA, “Cinema of the Oppressed: Censorship Legacies of Pakistani Films”
Karrar Hussain, University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany, “Can Secular Media Create Religious Backlash? Evidence from Pakistan’s Media Liberalization”
3:45 – 4:00 pm: Tea
4:00 – 5:00 pm: Closing Roundtable: Youth and the Future of Pakistan
Day 1: November 29, 2022
8:30 am: Tea and Registration
9:00 am: Plenary: Pippa Virdee, De Montfort University, UK, “‘Five Thousand Years of Pakistan:’ The Ancient in the Modern.”
9:30 – 10:45 am: Panel 1: The Intellectual Inheritance
Chair: Sarah Suhail, Arizona State University, USA
Hasan Hameed, Princeton University, USA, “Toward Democratic, Islamic Politics: Imagining Pakistan in British India”
Charles Ramsay, Baylor University, USA, “Sir Sayyid and the Envisioning of Pakistan”
Aman Madan, University of Virginia, USA, “Vision(s) of the Islamic State: The Case of A.R. Cornelius”
10:45 am – 12:00 pm: Panel 2: The Long Shadow of the 1947 Partition and State Building
Chair: Yaqoob Khan Bangash, Mittal Institute, Harvard University, USA
Sana Rizvi, University of Oxford, UK, “Stories of Survival: Muhajir Shi’as and Community Building in Post-Partition Karachi”
Srishtee Sethi, Mittal Institute, Harvard University, India, “Bounded, Borderless, Betwixt: ‘Pak-Hindu Migrants’ at the Frontiers of India and Pakistan”
Manav Kapur, Princeton University, USA, “Evacuees without the Custodian: The Bengal Model of Evacuee Property 1947-55”
Brandon Marsh, Bridgewater College, USA, “Partisans of Pakistan? Pakistan’s British Civil Servants in an Era of Transition”
12:00 – 1:00 pm: Lunch and Address by Asim Khwaja, Harvard Kennedy School
1:00 – 2:15 pm: Panel 3: Internal Security: Policing, Geopolitics and Countering Violent Extremism
Chair: John (Jack) Gill, Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, National Defense University, Washington DC, USA
Asfandyar Mir, United States Institute of Peace, Washington DC, USA, “Pakistan’s Violent Challengers: Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, ISIS and Baloch Separatists”
Zoha Waseem, University of Warwick, UK, “Geopolitics of Police Militarization in Postcolonial Pakistan”
Hassan Abbas, National Defense University, USA, “Countering Extremist Narratives in Pakistan”
Kathy Gannon, Former Associated Press/Harvard Kennedy School, USA, “What Taliban’s Return to Kabul Means for Pakistan”
2:15 – 3:30 pm: Panel 4: From the ‘Peripheries’
Chair: S. Akbar Zaidi, IBA, Karachi, Pakistan
Sarah Shah, City University of New York, USA, “Re-imagining the Frontier: Transitional Politics of the Integration of Federally Administered Tribal Agency in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa”
Muhammad Farooq, Kent State University, USA, “Framing the Periphery: Pakistan’s Strategic Compulsion or Necropolitical Control?”
Fariha Khalil, University of Washington, USA, “The Warriors of Lyari: A Tale of Courage from Karachi’s No-go Town”
3:30 – 3:45 pm: Tea
3:45 – 5:00 pm: Panel 5: Religion and Society
Chair: Sana Haroon, University of Massachusetts, Boston, USA
Umair Rasheed, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA, “Pakistan’s Blasphemy Politics: Grievance Formation and Mobilization in Neoliberal Times”
Mary Hunter, University of St. Andrews, UK, “The Status of Ahmadis in Pakistan: Maulana Maududi’s Lingering and Complex Legacy”
Hussain Muhammad, University of Erfurt, Germany, “Contenders for Power or Crusaders for Democracy? Pakistan, Politics and Ulama”
Asadullah Alvi, University of Texas, Austin, USA, “What Kind of Secularism? Spiritual Thread in the Works of Pakistani Urdu Feminist Writers”
6:00 pm: Keynote Session
6:00 pm: Remarks by Hitesh Hathi, Executive Director, Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, Harvard University
6:05 pm: Remarks by His Excellency Sardar Masood Khan, Ambassador of Pakistan to the United States
6:20 pm: Keynote speech by The Honourable Mr. Justice Qazi Faez Isa, Senior Puisne Judge of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, 16th Chief Justice of Balochistan (2009-14)
This conference team wishes to thank the Mittal Institute and the South Asian Studies Department at Harvard for their generous support and conference organization; the Near East and South Asia Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University for sponsoring a panel and logistics; and the American Institute of Pakistan Studies for providing general and bursary support for early career researchers.
Co-sponsored by:
