Speaker: Karthika Naïr, Author and Poet Moderator: Parimal Patil, Professor of Religion and Indian Philosophy, Harvard University In Until the Lions, Karthika Naïr retells the Mahabharata through the embodied voices of women and marginal characters, so often conquered and destroyed throughout history. She captures the richness and complexity of the Mahabharata, while illuminating lives buried […]
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Speaker: Naveen Bharathi, Mittal Institute Raghunathan Family Fellow, 2019-2020 Moderator: Sai Balakrishnan, Assistant Professor of Urban Planning, Harvard Graduate School of Design This presentation will show how residential caste-segregation is independent of city size, using the first-ever large-scale evidence of neighborhood-resolution data from 147 of the largest cities in contemporary India. Bharathi will discuss one […]
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Tue, Nov 5, 2019 from 06:00pm — 07:30pm, ET
Economic corridors — ambitious infrastructural development projects throughout Asia and Africa — are dramatically redefining the shape of urbanization. As these corridors cut across croplands, the conversion of agricultural lands into new urban uses has erupted in volatile land conflicts. This talk will focus on urbanization along the first economic corridor built in India, the […]
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Mon, Nov 4, 2019 from 04:15pm — 05:45pm, ET
Between the Yogi and the Commissar: Imagining De-Colonial Science in Postcolonial India, c. 1952–1977 Projit Bihari Mukharji, Associate Professor, University of Pennsylvania Moderated by Victor Seow, Assistant Professor, Department of History of Science, Harvard University For the generation of political leaders who took charge of the newly independent Indian state in 1947, the world seemed […]
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Mon, Oct 28, 2019 from 06:00pm — 07:30pm, ET
Urban conservation is often a pressing challenge in historic Indian cities experiencing the pressures of development. Many cities, often lacking any viable local-level policy and enforcement, have resorted to alternative tools, often citizen-led, to accomplish the goal of conservation. This seminar will explore the tools of advocacy, politics, and civic engagement through recent examples from the city of Lucknow in northern India.
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Fri, Oct 25, 2019 from 04:00pm — 05:30pm, ET
Delusional States is the first in-depth study of state-making and social change in Gilgit-Baltistan, a Shia-majority region of Sunni-dominated Pakistan and a contested border area that forms part of disputed Kashmir. Ali will discuss how Gilgit-Baltistan’s image within Pakistan as an idyllic paradise overlooks how the region is governed as a suspect security zone and dispossessed through multiple processes of state-making, including representation, militarization, and sectarianized education.
Speakers:
Nosheen Ali, Karti Dharti, Institute for Ecological Studies, Pakistan
Ali Asani, Harvard University, will moderate the discussion
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Thu, Oct 24, 2019 from 04:00am — 06:00am, ET
VENUE
India International Centre
This talk-cum-demonstration will focus on the development of the Soft Robotics STEM kit for students designed by researchers at Harvard Biodesign Lab.
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After the 1880s, Mysore was established as the home of the royal family. Despite its interrupted and uncertain status as a “capital” city, it became the site of an experiment in ornamentalism by the 20th century. It was among the first cities in India to have a City Improvement Trust in 1903, a few years after the Bombay Improvement Trust was set up in 1898. In the Trust’s negotiations with the municipality on the one hand, and the Palace establishment on the other, we see a specific form of material and temporal “ordering” that drew as much on the sovereign power of the monarch — though mediated by an increasingly powerful bureaucracy — as on a creative adaptation of the diverse forces, techniques, and devices more properly associated with “governmentality.” How does the invention of Royal Mysore challenge existing conceptions of the colonial city as a site of modernity?
Speaker:
Janaki Nair, Professor of History, Jawaharlal Nehru University
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Tue, Oct 15, 2019 from 06:00pm — 08:00pm, ET
Our Fall 2019 Visiting Artist Fellows, Sagar Chhetri from Nepal and Sakshi Gupta from India, will exhibit their artwork to provide creative commentary on identity today in South Asia. During the reception, both Chhetri and Gupta will present their work and engage in a discussion with the audience. Snacks will be served at the October 15 opening reception!
Eclipse, Sagar Chhetri
At the Still Point of the Turning World, Sakshi Gupta
The exhibition will be available for viewing between October 15, 2019 and November 26, 2019 on the fourth floor of CGIS South. The opening reception will take place on October 15, 2019.
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Lashkar-e-Tayyaba is the most competent, lethal, and loyal proxy of the Pakistani state, operating in India, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in South Asia and beyond. In this presentation, C. Christine Fair will draw from a narrative analysis of a ten percent random sample of nearly 1,000 biographies of slain LeT fighters to delve into the battlefield motivation of the fighters. She will reveal the dark role that families play in a young man’s decision to fight in Pakistani terrorist organizations, deriving various forms of social capital from a male family member’s participation in so-called “jihad.”
Speaker:
C. Christine Fair, Provost’s Distinguished Associate Professor, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University
Moderator:
Kristin E. Fabbe, Assistant Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School
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Tue, Oct 8, 2019 from 05:00pm — 06:30pm, ET
How can India take advantage of data to achieve its developmental objectives while balancing the need for personal privacy? The recently implemented Account Aggregator framework tries to establish a digital consent architecture to allow post-collection transfers of data. This will unlock a number of financial models to serve those who are not currently part of the formal banking systems. But at the same time, this can have a serious impact on personal privacy. A similar model is being attempted in the health system, and that too has similar repercussions. The speakers on this panel will delve into the interplay between data transfer and personal privacy in both the financial and healthcare systems.
Speakers:
Rahul Matthan, Partner, Trilegal, India
I. Glenn Cohen, James A. Attwood and Leslie Williams Professor of Law, Harvard Law School; Director, Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School
Moderator: Tarun Khanna, Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School; Director, the Mittal Institute
This event is co-sponsored by The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School.
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Tue, Oct 1, 2019 from 06:00pm — 07:30pm, ET
Raj Rewal is internationally recognized for the creation of buildings that respond with sensitivity to the complex demands of rapid urbanization, climate, and culture. Earlier in his career, his focus on low-cost housing led him to design a large number of dwelling units, fragmented into smaller aggregations enclosing a variety of spaces for different building types — an experience that led him to create a series of public projects in a humane manner, for works of epic proportions. Rewal will discuss his past work in public housing, the lessons learned from the cities of Rajasthan, Mediterranean villages, and high-density developments, and how the study of the existing traditional pattern of living can provide cues for place-making that can promote community activities.
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