Round-table Discussion on Textual Interpretation & South Asian History

Dept. of Asian Languages & Literature and South Asia Center
1:30 - 3:30 pm on Thursday, October 27 2005
Gowen M218 (Asian L&L Student Lounge, 2nd floor mezzanine)

This will be an informal discussion among South Asia faculty and students. We plan to use Inden's introduction chapter (see below) as a starting point to talk about the pros and cons of various methodologies for textual interpretation, whether from an authorist, structuralist, post-structuralist, contextual, estheticist, historical, philological, intertextual or other perspective. In some ways, this is a continuation of the discussions we had last Spring quarter when Prof. Romila Thapar was visiting this campus. Hope you can join us!

[See the publicity flyer]

Please take a look at the reading below and join us for the discussion.

Reading

Introduction: From Philological to Dialogical Texts, from Inden, Ronald, Jonathan Walters and Daud Ali, (2000), Querying the Medieval: Texts and the History of Practices in South Asia, pp. 3-28. OUP.

Review by Smith, Frederick M. (2005), Univ. of Iowa in JAAR 73: 542-544.
Review by Davis, Richard H. (2002), Bard College in JAS, 61: 1408-11.
Review by Gordon, Stewart (2002), Univ. of Michigan in American Historical Review, 107:1521-2.
Review by Kerr, Ian J. (2000), Univ. of Manitoba in History: Review of New Books, 28: 185.

Last Updated: Oct 19, 2005
Prem Pahlajrai (prem@u.washington.edu)