Jaipur Conference at Columbia (announcement)

[Guest guest]

The following event announcement is being posted to your mailing list

or listserv from the EVENTS CALENDAR section of SARAI. Please contact

event organizers directly for any further information.

David Magier

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/southaisa/cuvl

 

======================

Jack Hawley <jsh3

 

December 15, 2002

 

Dear friends and colleagues:

 

With great pleasure, we are writing to announce the Barbara Stoler

Miller Memorial Conference for 2003. It will be held in New York City

on Friday and Saturday, February 7-8, 2003, with a workshop for high

school teachers to follow on Sunday, February 9. Our sponsors for

this event are: The Southern Asian Institute of Columbia University,

Barnard College, the Asia Society, and the Hill Center. The subject

of the conference is:

 

Jaisingh's Jaipur:

Scientific, Religious, and Artistic Mediations at Court.

 

We believe it's going to be a splendid and thought-provoking event.

We intend to look behind current exercises of power in South

Asia-indeed, behind the colonial period-to see how Raja Jaisingh II

created a court that understood the managing of difference as one of

its central rationales. The planning of the new city of Jaipur some

300 years ago was itself an expression of this purpose. We will

direct special attention to the way in which Jaisingh's court and his

own writings mediated between cultural systems that we now associate

with the words Hindu and Muslim.

 

As one of its special aspects, the Jaipur conference will feature the

work of a group of scholars coordinated by Professor David Pingree of

Brown University, who have been working with manuscripts and

instruments that reveal how Jaisingh's court achieved significant

advances in the exact sciences. These extend from the famous

observatories Jaisingh established to much smaller astrononical

instruments, some of which can be found in the Rare Books collection

at Columbia. Other speakers will explore mediations achieved and

exchanges adopted in the realm of religion, architecture, and the fine

arts.

 

We have posted a tentative conference schedule as an attachment to

this letter. If you would like to attend, please register by getting

in touch with Mary Miller, Administrative Assistant at Columbia's

Southern Asian Institute. You may do this either by phone or e-mail:

 

(212) 854-3616; or msm2004.

 

Guests from beyond the New York region (other than program

participants) will be responsible for arranging their own

accommodations; the Institute is glad to suggest the names of nearby

hotels, upon request. The conference is free and open to the public,

but space is limited. We welcome your participation!

 

Sincerely yours,

 

Gary Tubb and Jack Hawley

Coordinators