This one-day, in-person conference provides a unique forum for graduate students working on South Asia to engage in cross-disciplinary research conversations.
Friday, May 22, 2026
8:30 AM - 5:30 PM (Pacific Time)
Royce Hall, Rm 314
Photo: Matki dancer group from Ujjain, India. Suyash Dwivdei via WikiCommons, 2025; cropped. CC BY-SA 4.0.
This conference will feature research from diverse fields including the social sciences, humanities, science and technology studies, public policy and business programs and the program will include graduate students from anywhere in the world. The conference will feature the CISA Annual Lecture as a keynote. The speaker this year is Elora Shehabuddin, Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
The UCLA Center for India and South Asia (CISA)
Ninth Annual Graduate Interdisciplinary Conference on South Asia
Program Schedule
8:30 am WELCOME: Registration, tea/coffee and snacks
9:00 am PANEL 1: Media, Performance, and Visuality in South Asia
1. “Qur’an in Sound: Origins of the Cassette Boom in Pakistan,” Ali Raj, Columbia University
2. “Sacred Performance and Changing Ways of Seeing in Kerala’s Shadow Puppetry,” Rahul Koonathara, University of Connecticut
3. “Evil Eye, Dirty Look, and Desiring Gaze: ‘Nazar’ as Counter-Hegemonic,” Moodzi (Abhijeet), UCLA
10:30 am BREAK: Tea/coffee and snacks
11:00 am PANEL 2: Gender, Embodiment, and Queer/Feminist Politics
4. “Gifts for Labor: mechanical things and gender roles in India,” Samrudhi Dixit, Bard Graduate Center
5. “Minor Gestures, Major Politics: Maternal Care and Disability Justice in Pakistan,” Khansa Maria, University of Oxford
6. “Between Language, Voice, and Gesture: Queering the Archive of Rekhti,” Shailee Rajak, Stanford University
12:30 pm LUNCH
1:30 pm PANEL 3: Religion, Political Economy, and Historical Transformation
7. “Retaking Hegemony: the Rupee between the Mughal and British Empires,” Tanvi Rupakula, UC Santa Cruz
8. “Practical Prophetology" in the Texts of Ahmad Raza Khan (1856-1921),” Muhammad Souman Elah, UCLA
9. “Migration and Currency Internationalization: The Indian Rupee,” Vashishtha Doshi, UC Santa Barbara
3:00 pm BREAK: Snacks
3:30 pm CISA ANNUAL LECTURE & KEYNOTE
"Cultivating a Revolutionary Imagination Along the Surma: Communist Women’s Mobilization in Mid-20th-c. Eastern Bengal/Assam."
Elora Shehabuddin, Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies, at UC Berkeley.
5:30 pm-6:30 pm Reception
Special thanks to our contributors: UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, Ibn Khaldun Endowed Chair, Navin and Pratima Doshi Chair in Indian Studies, Professor Vijay Dhir.
Organizing Committee: Arpit Gaind, Pritam Dey, Mortaza Hassani, Isheeta Sharma, and Raqib Dar.
Download agenda with paper abstracts
Download file: CISA-10th-GSC-Program-Final,-21-May-26-24-xsh.pdf
Sponsor(s): Center for India and South Asia