Research Network on ‘The Indian Ocean as Visionary Area: Post-Multiculturalist Approaches to the Study of Culture and Globalisation’

Call for papers

Conference on ‘Connecting Histories across the Indian Ocean: Religion, Politics and Popular Culture’

onveners: Pamila Gupta - [email protected] - Preben Kaarsholm -
[email protected] - and Rochelle Pinto - [email protected]

Venue: The Sun-n-Sand Hotel, Panjim, Goa

Time: 19 to 21 November 2009

Abstracts of appr. 500 words should be sent as e-mail attachments in Word to Inge Jensen at Roskilde University, Denmark - [email protected] - before 30 April 2009. Although this deadline has passed, abstracts can still be sent to Pamila Gupta at [email protected]
The deadline for submission of papers accepted for presentation will be 15 October 2009.
Accommodation in Goa for the three nights of the conference will be offered to paper presenters, but they will be expected to cover their own costs of travel. A small number of travel subsidies can be applied for from the organizers by paper presenters, who are members of the Indian Ocean network,and unable to raise their own travel funds.
For further information about the Indian Ocean network, please see:
http://www.ruc.dk/isg_en/indianocean/

Outline of conference focus
An earlier Indian Ocean network conference in Johannesburg in January thisyear explored ‘Print Cultures, Nationalisms and Publics of the Indian Ocean’. At the Goa conference, the aim is to develop further agendas for transnational research, transcending the points of reference provided by national historiographies. An important focus will be the dynamics of port cities, places of transit, and networks of migration, trade and communications, whose interconnectivities criss-cross the histories of empires, colonies and nations. Another focus will be the interaction of religious mobilisations and discourse in the Indian Ocean region - dialogues and confrontations between Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Buddhist and other institutions of faith. The interaction of religious diasporas and imperial structures will constitute a further theme. The conference will also bring into the discussion other types of popular cultural articulation and will attempt to understand the cross-border characteristics of identity strategies, cultural politics and struggles over citizenship within the Indian Ocean arena from the late nineteenth century to the present day.