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SAI - News


Interim Professor Anthropology

A warm welcome to PD Dr. Beatrix Hauser who is presently interim professor at the Department of Anthropology. She studied Social Anthropology in Hamburg, Heidelberg and London. In 1989 she received her Magister Artium from the University of Hamburg and in 1997 her PhD, on the basis of her research on a contemporary Bengali tradition of story telling that is performed with the help of scroll paintings (Mit irdischem Schaudern und göttlicher Fügung: bengalische Erzähler und ihre Bildvorführungen, Berlin 1998). She taught at several universities and was, apart from other activities, research associate at the collaborative research centre 626: „Aesthetic Experience and the Dissolution of Artistic Limits“ at the Free University of Berlin. In January 2009 she passed her habilitation at the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg and received the venia legendi (postdoctoral lecture qualification) for Social Anthropology. Her habilitation thesis is about Hindu women in Orissa in their religious practices (Promising Rituals: Doing Gender in Southern Orissa, India, Halle 2008).

 

Beatrix Hauser’s research interests are the anthropology of religion (Hinduism, subaltern and transreligious practices, spirit possession, notions of im/purity, ritual theory), the anthropology of the body (cultural concepts of body and self, body techniques, emotions and senses, embodiment), the anthropology of performance (ritual, theatre, play, festival, oral tradition, arts, political performances, aesthetics, performance theories) and gender (cultural notions of femininity and masculinity, self-images and social identities, female religiosity, goddess worship, menstruation).

 

Beatrix Hauser’s current research focuses on Ramlila performances as an example of ritual theatre. She compares its mode(s) of performance and reception in different regions of India, last but not least in the megacity of Delhi where Ramlila has turned into a multimedia event. Two new projects aim to explore (1) the impact of modern transcultural yoga on concepts of the healthy body, and (2) the mediatization of conflicts and violence, with special reference to the burning of effigies as a form of protest.

Discussion "South Asia - space of unlimited possibilities?"
On sunday, 18 Okctober 2009, the indian author Uday Prakash and Professor Dietmar Rothermund were discussing the public spheres in India at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Professor Hans Harder acted as chair of the discussion in the International Centre of the Book Fair.

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Panel discussion Frankfurt Book Fair
Sayed Wiqar Ali Shah first Iqbal-Fellow
Sayed Wiqar Ali Shah, Head of the Department of History at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, will be guest professor at the SAI. His stay will start on 1 September 2009, presumably for three years. He is the recipient of the Alama-Iqbal-Fellowship of the Government of Pakistan which has recently returned to the SAI. Professor Shah will mainly collaborate with the Departments of History and Political Science and will participate in teaching as well as conduct his own research.

Professor Sayeed Wiqar Ali Shah

Photo: Professor Sayed Wiqar Ali Shah organizing aid measures during the earthquake that had struck northern Pakistan in 2006
Radio show on South Asia by SAI students
On 24 July 2009 the local radio station bermuda.funk, Mannheim, aired ""S.A.R.I. - Südasien regional informiert" [S.A.R.I. - South Asia regionally informed"]. The one-hour magazine was developed by students of the workshops "Made in South Asia" of the SAI's Department of History under supervision by Alexandra K. Schott and Justin Siefert. It is available as podcast.

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Podcast "S.A.R.I. - Südasien regional informiert"
Visit of the Ambassador of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka
On thursday, 16 July 2009, the Ambassador of Sri Lanka, H.E. Mr. Tikiri Bandara Maduwegedera, visited the South Asia Institute. Together with the Honorary Consul of Sri Lanka, Mr. Norbert Quack, he participated in the workshop „Made in South Asia“. Alexandra Schott and Justin Siefert (Department of Histroy) presented the highly interesting issue „Identity in South Asia“, supported by Prof. em. Dietmar Rothermund, whose lecture complemented the workshop nicely.

After meeting the SAI's board of directors, the guests of honour were received by Vice Rector Prof. Dr. Vera Nünning in the office of the Rector of Heidelberg University. At the same time, Professor Aditya Mukherjee, Director of the Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Advanced Study, and Prof. Mridula Mukherjee, Director of the Nehru Memorial Muesum and Library, were officially welcomed..



In a lively exchange possibilities of extending scientific cooperation were discussed. The Ambassador's visit ended with his signing of the Golden Book of Heidelberg University.

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