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The Poet’s Song: ‘Folk’ and its Cultural Politics in South Asia
Talk by Dr. Priyanka Basu, King's College London
10 February 2023, 2:00 pm, room 130.00.03

Department for Modern South Asian Languages and Literature is cordially inviting you to a talk by Dr. Priyanka Basu.

Dr. Priyanka Basu is a Lecturer in Performing Arts in the Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries at King’s College London. Her first monograph, The Poet’s Song: ‘Folk’ and its Cultural Politics in South Asia is forthcoming from Routledge (South Asian History and Culture series).

Kobigaan (lit. song of the poet) is a verse-duelling and song-theatre genre practiced across the India-Bangladesh border. It is one of the many dialogic genres in South Asia highlighting the verbal virtuosity, bricolage, and storytelling abilities of performers (kobiyaals). While rural performances of this genre (most often tied with religious rituals and village fairs) can last as long as overnight sessions, Kobigaan’s other manifestations are often truncated and adapted according to diverse venues, audience tastes and artistic choices. This talk focusses on the questions of authenticity of Kobigaan as ‘folk’ genre while travelling with the performers as well as in and out of the literary archive. Caste, class, and gender, and identity politics intertwine with the larger cultural politics of ‘folk’ in the cross-border contemporary practices of Kobigaan. Consequently, several performing groups become ‘claimants’ of authentic Kobigaan as it travels from rural settings to urban festivals, and from Bengali cinema to television and the new media. Over time, the element of debate (kobir loraai) has become a synecdoche for Kobigaan. It has also come to signify people’s songs, national culture, folk heritage and even sound chronotopes (in cinema). Conflictingly, the perception of Kobigaan in Bengali cultural memory also relies on its status as ‘decadent’, ‘extinct’ or ‘obsolete’. This talk considers such varied conceptions of Kobigaan as a performance genre as it traverses local, national, and trans-national diasporic communities.

More information here.

Posted on 06 Mar 2023
Pongalo Pongal!
16 January 2023, 6:00 pm, Room 010.00.01 (Computer Lab)

NSP department and students of Tamil kindly invite you to celebrate the Tamil Pongal festival with us.

We are celebrating the festival with a potluck, performances, Tamil music and conversations.

More details here.

Posted on 06 Mar 2023
Zweiter Deutscher Südasientag, 28-29 October 2022, Heidelberg

After the first event in Bonn in 2019 and a break due to the pandemic, the South Asia Institute at Heidelberg University will host the second Südasientag on 28-29 October 2022. The conference brings together both established and young scholars from all disciplines within humanities and social sciences who are interested in research topics in modern and contemporary South Asia.

Registration as an audience member is possible until 14 October 2022, please register by e-mail to hanni.truong@sai.uni-heidelberg.de. More information on the program can be found here.

Organising team:

Prof. Dr. Hans Harder (Heidelberg University)

Jun.-Prof. Dr. Carmen Brandt (Bonn University)

Dr. Ira Sarma (Leipzig University)

Posted on 06 Mar 2023
Book reading and discussion with author Shaheen Akhtar

Friday, Agust 18, 2022, 4:15 p.m., Hörsaal 010.01.05

We cordially invite you to a book reading and discussion with author Shaheen Akhtar on Friday, August 18th 2022. The event will take place in lecture hall 010.01.05 at 4.15.

Shaheen Akhtar is a notable Bangladeshi writer who won the “Prothom Alo Best Book Award“ in 2004 for her novel Talaash, which was translated by Ella Dutta into English as The Search and published by Zubaan in 2011. For her literary contributions, Shaheen has received the prestigious “Bangla Academy Award” (2015). In 2020 she has won the 3rd Asian Literature Award. She writes both novels and short stories. Shaheen’s works have been translated into English, German, and Korean.

Shaheen Akhtar will be present for a reading from her works and a discussion that will include aspects of translation of novels and short story from Bangla into English and German.

CATS, Vosstr. 2, enter through South Asia Institute (SAI)

More information here.

All are welcome!

Posted on 06 Mar 2023
Workshop and Roundtable - Revisiting Muharram

Wednesday, July 27, 2022, 3 p.m. - 6 p.m. (sharp), room 010.00.06


Public lecture:

Epsita Halder, Jadavpur University, Kolkata - In Search of Imam Husayn: Muharram in Kolkata from an Interdisciplinary Perspective


Roundtable discussion:

Torsten Tschacher, SAI, Heidelberg - Muharram beyond the Shia Script

Frank Korom, Boston University - Muharram Controversies in the Indo-Caribeean Diaspora

Pushkar Sohoni, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune - Ta'ziahs and Temples in the Western Deccan

Deepra Dandekar, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin - An Ethnographic Exploration of Muharram(s) in Pune

More information here.

All are invited!

Posted on 06 Mar 2023

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