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Conferences & Workshops in the US 2016-2017

Junior Scholars Conference on Pakistan
Conference Organized by: AIPS and funded by CAORC and AIPS at the Madison Concourse Hotel, Madison, WI

October 20, 2016
AIPS hosted its second Junior Scholars Conference on Pakistan on Thursday, October 20, 2016 at the 45th Annual Conference on South Asia. This conference showcased 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 was open to the public and concluded with a reception. Seven conference participants were selected through a competitive process. Participants and their presentation titles are listed below:
o Abida Bano, PhD Candidate, Western Michigan University, Women’s Representation in Local Democracy: Formal and Informal Institutions in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
o Saad Gulzar, PhD Candidate, New York University, Politicians: Experimental Evidence on Candidacy from KP, Pakistan
o Maira Hayat, PhD Candidate, University of Chicago, Big Companies, Small Bureaucrats: Water and Governance in Pakistan
o Sahar Khan, PhD Candidate, University of California, Irvine, Ontological Security: Explaining Continued State-sponsorship of Militancy in Pakistan
o Faiza Moatasim, Visiting Assistant Professor, Hamilton College, Negotiating Nonconformity: the Politics of Encroachment in the Planned Modern City of Islamabad
o Shayan Rajani, PhD Candidate, Tufts University, Obstructing Geography: Resisting British Interventionism in Early Nineteenth Century Sindh
o Mashal Saif, Assistant Professor, Clemson University, Sovereignty between God and the State: Insulting Muhammad in Contemporary Pakistan

7th Annual Pakistan Student Association Conference on Pakistan
Conference Organized by: CAORC at the University of Michigan (UM), Ann Arbor, MI
April 7, 2017

The 7th Annual Pakistan Conference, organized by the Organization of Pakistani Students and the Center for South Asian Studies, was held on April 7, 2017. The UM Pakistan Conference in an initiative aimed at highlighting new and exciting work on Pakistan, and facilitating and fostering conversations between artists, activists, and academics. The theme of the 2017 UM Pakistan Conference was gender and sexuality. The conference highlighted the work that seeks to understand the role of gender in shaping, experiencing, and negotiating various aspects of everyday life. The conference stated with a panel on Masculinities in Everyday Life, which was followed by Gender in Public and Online Spaces, Gendered Selves in the Islamic Revival and Public Art: Writing on the Wall. The conference presented works on the gendered experiences of moving through spaces, transit, roads, shrines, and religious gatherings, to name a few, and how these spaces and encounters are shot through with power relations that are shaped, mediated, and regulated through notions of masculinity and femininity. These presentations generated questions about how gender ideologies work their way through state programs, and about notions prevalent in society at large, and how these notions are both contested, negotiated, manipulated, and actively (re)produced by individuals and groups in various situations. List of presenters and their tiles are as following:
• Nida Kirmani, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Gender, Mobility, and Urban Violence: The view from Lyari
• Omar Kasmani, Freie Universitat Berlin, Neither. Nor. Trans: Notes on Dispensable Masculinities and the Promise of Thirdness
• Fizzah Sajjad, LSE, London, Gender Equity in Transport Planning
• Nighat Dad, Digital Rights Foundation of Pakistan, Gender and Internet Freedom

Scholars at the Intersection of South Asian and African Studies Student Colloquium (SISAAS)
Conference Organized by: CAORC at Howard University, Washington, DC
April 8, 2017

This AIPS (co)sponsored symposium was held at Armour J. Blackburn University Center, Howard University on April 8, 2017. This ECA funded full day (9am – 5pm) event invited its participants to explore exciting topics discovered in the overlap of South Asian and Africana Studies. SISAAS presented two panels devoted to unpacking historical and cultural content. The first was Roots & Routes: Labor and Migration in the Indian and Atlantic Ocean Worlds, surveying African contributions to the western Indian Ocean world from Arabia to South Asia and migrations from the Indian Ocean world into that of the Atlantic. The second, Cultures in Circulation: Religion, Music and Film in Diasporic Contexts, introduced participants to various Indian-African diasporic exchanges, from African American jazz musicians in Bombay to Bollywood films in Ghana. The SISAAS third panel provided students with resources and information about the foreign-language training programs and funded research opportunities that would afford access to those fields of study. Conference Program: http://www.pakistanstudies-aips.org/sites/default/files/SISAAS-Program.pdf
• Faiza Mushtaq, Institute of Business Administration, Karachi, Organizational Routines and Religious Commitments: The Innovative Traditionalism of Al-Huda

Locality, Genre, and Muslim Belonging in South Asia
Conference Organized by: CAORC at Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC
September 15-16, 2017

The Locality, Genre, and Muslim Belonging in South Asia Conference was held on September 15-16, 2017. Organized and hosted by the Wake Forest University, this ECA funded conference brought together scholars (see participant bios: http://college.wfu.edu/history/locality/speakers-and-discussants/) from various disciplinary backgrounds to reflect on the issue of Muslim identity in South Asia. This conference aimed to build new dialogues on shared divergent trajectories of Muslims across borders in South Asia (primarily India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka). Please visit http://college.wfu.edu/history/locality/abstracts/ to read abstracts of papers presented at the conference.
• Arsalan Khan, Union College, Pious Masculinity: Gender, Ritual, and Ethnical Reflexivity in the Tablighi Jamaat in Pakistan
• Nida Mushtaq and Shilo Shiv Suleman, Fearless Collective, Writing on the Wall
• Comments by - Anjali Arondekar, University of California at Santa Cruz
• Poetry Reading by: Tarfia Faizullah, University of Michigan.