Fellowships 2008: Call for Proposals Tasveer Ghar

“Kaleidoscopic Sites and Sights: The Printed Visual Culture/s of Religious Pluralism”

Last Date of Submission: May 10, 2008

We are pleased to invite proposals for our second short-term fellowships involving the collection and documentation of unique forms of popular visual arts of India with a focus on religious pluralism and sacred sites in India. The estimated duration of the fellowship is 6 months, starting July 2008. At the end of the fellowship period, collected specimens will be digitized and virtually exhibited along with an accompanying image essay on the website of Tasveer Ghar. Prospective applicants can take a look at the website for examples of image essays that have already been posted.

The theme for 2008: Kaleidoscopic Sites and Sights, The Printed Visual Cultures of Religious Pluralism

What does the visual culture of modern India’s much-vaunted religious diversity look like? This is the critical question that we pose to prospective applicants to the 2008 Tasveerghar Fellowships. Over the millennia, numerous religious traditions, practices and institutions have arrived, evolved, and come to co-exist, as well as to enter into conflict in the subcontinent. Many studies have documented the verbal
bases as well as products of religious pluralism, syncretism and co-habitation. Yet, we know very little about the visual consequences of the coming together and co-development of faiths and belief systems that have ranged from the iconographic and the aniconic to the iconoclastic. How have these been produced and sustained through the printed products of mechanical reproduction such as religious posters,
street hoardings, calendars, pilgrimage paraphernalia and other printed ephemera? How are shared visual idioms and vocabularies developed through the coming together of faiths around sacred shrines and pilgrimages, personages and public events? How are these images incorporated and looked upon in the everyday lives of people, and imbued with meaning by diverse groups? Most importantly, what role does the production, circulation and consumption of such visual ‘ephemera’ play in underwriting a culture of religious pluralism that has survived and transformed into multiple shapes and domains over the millennia, e.g. by means of new technologies or migration?

Arguably, religious pluralism has cleared the ground for the creation of a culture of secularism in India, and also acts as a break on the more egregious consequences of religious orthodoxy, political extremism and cultural (trans)nationalism. How do the visual cultures of religious pluralism inform the visual practices of secularism, and
do they offer a critique of the visual culture of religious fundamentalism? How might these visual ephemera challenge and expand our understandings of religious interchange and conflict? In what ways and for what reasons has the notion of pluralism undergone redefinition? These are some of the questions to which we seek answers through collections of images and analyses in the form of visual
essays.

We would like our Fellows to generate ethnographies of images, explore new patterns and chains of seeing and being displayed. By ethnographies, what we mean is a “thick description” for each collected image: not just contexts of production, but of circulation, usage, and so on; an account of how each image might fit into a
particular “inter-ocular” universe. We encourage our contributors to be as creative and imaginative as the popular visual cultures of South Asia have been.

Before you write your proposal, please read our Frequently Asked Questions to get some practical tips on applying for this fellowship, such as who is eligible to apply, what does the fellowship provide, what should your proposal contain, and so on. It would also help to look at some of the already posted visual essays on the website based on the last year’s fellowship work.

See details: http://tasveerghar.net/call.html

Frequently Asked Questions: http://tasveerghar.net/faqs.html

Download the details in MS Word format:
http://tasveerghar.net/desktop/TGCFP08.doc

Tasveer Ghar’s past virtual galleries: http://tasveerghar.net/gallery.html

Also see our recent Visual Essay:
Remediation: Iconic Images and Everyday Spaces – ‘Female Film Stars’
in Print Media: by Madhuja Mukherji
http://tasveerghar.net/2007/madhuja/

Looking forward to receive your response and ideas.

Christiane Brosius
Manishita Dass
Sumathi Ramaswamy
Yousuf Saeed

CFA: AIIS Fellowship Competition

AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF INDIAN STUDIES FELLOWSHIP COMPETITION

The American Institute of Indian Studies invites applications from scholars from all disciplines who wish to conduct their research in India. Junior fellowships are given to doctoral candidates to conduct research for their dissertations in India for up to eleven months. Senior long-term (six to nine months) and short-term (four months or less) fellowships are available for scholars who hold the Ph.D. degree. Some senior fellows in the humanities will receive fellowships funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Performing and Creative Arts fellowships are available for accomplished practitioners of the performing arts of India and creative artists. Professional development fellowships are available to scholars and professionals who have not previously worked in India. Eligible applicants include 1) U.S. citizens, and 2) citizens of other countries who are students or faculty members at U.S. colleges and universities. This requirement is not applicable to U.S. citizens.

For applications, please contact us at American Institute of Indian Studies, 1130 E. 59th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, (773) 702-8638. Email: aiis@uchicago.edu.  Applications can be downloaded from our web site: www.indiastudies.org. The application deadline is July 1, 2008.

Study of India’s History and Culture

The Community College Humanities Association, Northern Virginia Community
College, and the South Asian Studies Center of the University of Virginia invite applications for the National Endowment for the Humanities — sponsored, month-long summer 2008 institute “Bharata Darshan, Past and Present in the Study of India’s History and Culture.” The institute will convene from July 7-18 in Shimla and from July 19-August in New Delhi (including a two-day session in Agra). Twenty-four community college and university professors will be competitively selected. The institute is designed to provide for instructors of undergraduate courses whose subject matter concerns India in whole or in part a first-hand
acquaintance with India’s cultural and historical resources, as well as the opportunity to learn from institute scholars Swapan Chakravorty, Ashgar Ali Engineer, Sunil Kumar, Meena Nayak, Janaki Nair, Shiva Prakash, Shereen Ratnagar, Indrani Sanyal, Kumar Shahani, and Romila Thapar.

Institute co-directors are Beverly Blois (Dean, Humanities, NVCC) and Dan Ehnbom (director, South Asian Studies Center, UVa). For information, please visit the institute website: www.ccha-assoc.org/Bharata08/index.htnl.

David A. Berry, Executive Director
Community College Humanities Association
c/o Essex County College
303 University Avenue
Newark, NJ 07102-1798
973/877-3577

Email: berry@essex.edu
Visit the website at http://www.ccha-assoc.org/Bharata08/index.html