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Conferences & Workshops in the US 2015-2016

6th Annual Pakistan Student Association Conference on Pakistan
Conference Organized by: CAORC at the University of Michigan (UM), Ann Arbor, MI
April 8, 2016

The 6th annual Pakistan Conference, organized by the Organization of Pakistani Students and the Center for South Asian Studies, was held on April 8, 2016. The panelists, academics and artists from both Pakistan and the United States, focused on the theme of infrastructure and development. Presenters at the conference addressed issues around both the desire for and rejection of infrastructure. Through a conversation between artists and academics, presenters engaged infrastructural development not as predetermined or inevitable, but as a process entangled with social and political implications. They addressed the questions: what is the relationship between infrastructure and development? What kinds of politics does infrastructure enable or obstruct?  By exploring the particularities of infrastructural production and experience in Pakistan, the conference participants (both panelists and audience) grappled with the complex and multi-faceted aspects of infrastructure in Pakistan today.
Presenters from outside the University of Michigan attending were as following:
• Nausheen Anwar, Associate Professor, Institute of Business Administration, Karachi,
• Majed Akhter, Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, Indiana University, 
• Hafeez Jamali, Assistant Professor, School of Arts, Humanities, & Social Sciences, Habib University, Karachi,
• David Gilmartin, Professor, Department of History, North Carolina State University,
• Shahana Rajani, Artist, Tentative Collective, Karachi,
• Zahra Malkani, Artist, Tentative Collective Karachi.

Trending Pakistan: A History Workshop
Conference Organized by: CAORC & AIPS Unrestricted Funds at Arizona State University (ASU), Tempe, AZ

April 28 - 29, 2016
On April 28-29, 2016 AIPS sponsored this workshop, which was hosted by the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict, Arizona State University. This was the second of three international workshops exploring current dynamics and future possibilities for Pakistan studies, and brought together scholars from Pakistan, the US and Europe. To learn more about the conference watch a video about it at https://vimeo.com/171018196

Junior Scholars Conference on Pakistan
Conference Organized by: CAORC at the Madison Concourse Hotel, Madison, WI
October 20, 2016

AIPS will host its second Junior Scholars Conference. This conference showcases the new research being done by junior scholars (both recent PhDs and graduate students with ABD status) in the field of Pakistan Studies in the United States. The conference will be open to the public and conclude with a reception.
Seven conference participants were selected through a competitive process:
• Shayan Rajani, PhD Candidate, Department of History, Tufts University
• Sahar Khan, PhD Candidate, Department of Political Science, University of California – Irvine
• Maira Hayat, PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago
• Saad Gulzar, PhD Candidate, Department of Political Science, New York University
• Abida Bano, PhD Candidate, Department of Political Science, Western Michigan University
• Mashal Saif, Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Clemson University
• Faiza Moatasim, Post Doctoral Fellow & Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Asian Studies and History, Hamilton College

Muslim Thought and Practice in South Asia: Perspectives within and between History and Religious Studies
Conference Organized by: Teena Purohit (BU) and funded by CAORC at Boston University
October 13-15, 2016

This conference brought together experts in the field of South Asian history and Religious Studies to revisit some key components of South Asian Islam. The premise of this meeting was to argue that historians need to engage more closely with the categories and ideas of “tradition” while Religious Studies scholars must work with the forms of critique and questions of historiography that are at the center of the historian’s practice. To this end, the conference “Muslim Thought and Practice in South Asia” attempted to speak to the specific intersection and interface between the two disciplines in both premodern and modern South Asia. This conferenc also tried to identify and highlight the precise intellectual shifts and continuities that mark the transition to the colonial period with respect to questions of religion, language, and politics. Another hallmark of this conference was its attention to the post-colonial context with significant focus on Muslim thought and practice in Pakistan—a country and subject that is often ignored in such discussions.