For 2025 – Virtual participants based outside the US qualify for 50% reduced registration. Virtual attendance will be possible through the conference app.
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Panelist Search Board
Panelist Search Board Request Form
Name: Mehvish Siddiqui
University Institution/Affiliation: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Contact: mehvishsiddi@umass.edu
Name of Panel/ Round Table/ Single Paper: The elements in Urdu: Culture, climate, and epistemic violence
Abstract:
My essay will employ ‘critical fabulation’ (Saidiya Hartman, “Venus in Two Acts”) to speculate upon the epistemic scope of climate change’s ‘slow violence’ (Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor) in the Indian subcontinent. Specifically, I will relate the effects of climate change on language politics in the Indian subcontinent today in the context of the Urdu language, which, under a miscellany of historical forces, has become: a dying language in India, one whose status as the national language is being challenged in Pakistan, and one which has the character of a settler-colonial language in Bangladesh. My choice of the Urdu language for the purpose of this essay is deliberate as, in addition to Urdu’s being a politically piquant language for a variety of reasons in the Indian subcontinent, the Urdu lyric tradition’s rich compendium of nature imagery which it engages to achieve a default allegorical method of poetics is a vital to its relevance to climate change, epistemic injustice, and violence. I will also relay, through my analysis of the peculiar origins and transmission of Urdu in the Indian subcontinent, how the use of ‘critical fabulation’ in the environmental humanities can lead scholarship to ‘become undisciplined’ in a way that Christina Sharpe believes is essential to finding “new modes and methods of research and teaching, new ways of entering and leaving the archives” (In the Wake 13). |
Name: Mania Taher
University Institution/Affiliation: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Contact: mttaher@illinois.edu
Name of Panel/ Round Table/ Single Paper: Space, Identity, and Activities: World-making of Aging Bangladeshi immigrant women in New York
Abstract: This paper investigates Bangladeshi immigrant women’s activities inside and outside their dwellings as part of their resettlement process in New York. Through their everyday activities, they proclaim their identities as Bangladeshi immigrant women and manifest their agencies by re-adapting the activity patterns they were accustomed to in Bangladesh. Here, I will discuss the role of dwellings in temporal understandings of the self from the perspective of aging Bangladeshi immigrant women in New York. From the narratives of two research participants above sixty years of age, I suggest they re-organize their dwelling spaces as the unspoken cultural codes with ethnic Bangladeshi values as part of their resettlement process. For participant A, her kitchen space is her territory for expressing power and care for her family members, where each object and their organization systems play a significant role in creating her territory. Contrarily, participant B served as a domestic worker in her employers’ dwellings for years but failed to establish her dwelling. Nevertheless, within her current dwelling, a shared space missing the traditional Bangladeshi Muslim cultural norms of separate spaces for men and women, she created her territory by shutting the bedroom door and being enclosed with all her material possessions. Both participants reclaimed and re-identified their identities by using dwelling spaces in nuanced ways under different socio-spatial conditions. This paper reflects a gendered perspective of territories inside these dwellings through everyday activities, and several queries come forward: How do these aged Bangladeshi immigrant women create territories inside their dwellings through their activities and physical arrangement of spaces? Can spatial memories of past-lived dwellings add meaning to their current activities? How do these activities manifest their agencies for a better resettlement experience in New York? Through analyzing everyday activities inside and outside of their dwellings, this research’s objective is two-fold: first, to gain insight into the lived experiences of these aging immigrant women inside their dwellings; second, to assess the efficacy of the research methods used here to receive reflections on their occupied built environments. Through ethnographic observation, oral histories, photo-elicitation from family archives, and documentation through photographs and drawings, this research explores the performative acts of Bangladeshi immigrant women inside their current dwellings that transformed over time in their acculturation process in a new setting.
Name: Mania Taher
University Institution/Affiliation: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Contact: mttaher@illinois.edu
Name of Panel/ Round Table/ Single Paper: Space, Identity, and Activities: World-making of Aging Bangladeshi immigrant women in New York
Abstract:
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Symposium Submission Deadlines
February 1
- Symposium submission portal opens
- Conference registration opens
- Meal Ticket purchasing opens
March 1
- Symposium submission portal closes – all Symposium submissions due
June 30
- All participants must be registered by June 30
September 1
- Last day to submit program schedule changes. Changes made after September 1 will not appear in the printed program book (only on the printed addendum)
- Deadline for changing number of participants, requesting receptions/dinners, adjusting Concourse hotel arrangements
September 15
- Registration refund deadline
October 1
- Online registration closes. After October 1st, registration fees must be paid upon arrival to the conference and are $260 (non-student) and $120 (student and emeritus)
Panel, Roundtable, & Single Paper Submission Deadlines
February 1
- Panel, Round Table, & Single Paper submission portals open
- Conference registration opens
- Meal Ticket purchasing opens
April 5
- Submission portals close – all submissions due
July 31
- All participants must be registered by July 31st
September 1
- Last day to submit program schedule changes. Changes made after September 1 will not appear in the printed program book (only on the printed addendum)
September 15
- Registration refund deadline
October 1
- Online registration closes. After October 1st, registration fees must be paid upon arrival to the conference
Film Submission Deadlines
February 1
- Film submissions open (email Conference Coordinator)
- Conference registration opens
April 5
- Film submissions close
Association Meeting Submission Deadlines
February 1
- Association Meeting submission portal opens
- Conference registration opens
September 1
- Association Meeting submission portal closes
Additional information can be found on our Association Meeting web page.
Special Event Submission Deadlines
February 1
- Special Event submission portal opens
- Conference registration opens
September 1
- Special Event submission portal closes
September 15
- Deadline to submit additional information and/or changes related to your special event submission
Additional information can be found on our Special Events web page.
In Memoriam Submission Deadlines
If you would like to send additional information regarding your Memorial Submission, please email the ACSA Team directly – conference@southasia.wisc.edu
Memorial Form
Meal Ticket Deadlines
February 1
- Meal Ticket sales begin
- Conference registration opens
October 1
- Deadline for purchasing Meal Tickets and selecting meal options (meat or vegetarian)
Please note that no Meal Tickets will be for sale during the conference.
Conference attendees who have not purchased their Meal Ticket online before the Oct 1 deadline can find food in the Madison Concourse Hotel, CIRC, located on the first floor of the hotel. You may also use the Restaurant Map provided in your program book to locate restaurants near the conference.