The Colombo Institute has been working for the last two years to organize a regional conference as part of its ‘Connecting South Asia Project.’ Its co-partner, Theertha International Artists’ Collective, will organize and curate an exhibition on South Asian Art in Colombo to coincide with the conference, which will broadly reflect the conference theme where selected artists from South Asia Network for the Arts will be invited to participate. The exhibition will open with the start of the conference and will continue for one month.

The conference is the main event of our effort. It will focus on the different and complex ways in which culture works in contemporary South Asia. The three day conference is divided into six sessions, and each session will be organized under the following themes: Who are we: Elasticity of identity; Signs, imaginaries and visualscapes: Art, politics and interrogations; Everything that surrounds: Places, spaces and geographies; Home away from home: Migration and Diasporas and Art of the everyday: Popular arts, taste(s) and anxieties.

As part of Colombo Institute’s overall project, edited versions of the papers presented will be published in the South Asia Journal for Culture and Sinhala and Tamil translations of selected essays will appear in Patithaand Panuwal, the local language journals published by Colombo Institute.

Dates: March 15 – 19, 2011

For further detail and updates, please visit http://spacecolombo.blogspot.com/

The principal funder for this event is the Prince Claus Fund

]]> http://colomboinstitute.org/2010/08/07/south-asian-regional-conference/feed/ http://colomboinstitute.org/2010/08/06/call-for-papers-2/ http://colomboinstitute.org/2010/08/06/call-for-papers-2/#comments Fri, 06 Aug 2010 12:45:44 +0000 ci http://colomboinstitute.org/?p=1054 South Asia Journal for Culture Volume 4, 2010

Call for Papers, Reviews, Photo-essays and Opinion Essays

On behalf of the Editorial Board of the South Asia Journal for Culture, the Colombo Institute for the Advanced Study of Society and Culture would like to invite all interested individuals to submit papers, reviews, photo-essays and opinion essays for consideration for publication in the fourth issue of the South Asia Journal for Culture. While no page limit is set for submissions, standard academic practices in the social sciences and humanities with regard to stylistic conventions such as references and footnotes are important considerations. More specifically, all references should be inserted in the main text within parentheses (eg. Last name of author, date of publication: page number/s) and the complete reference details of all texts should be presented at the end of the paper within a bibliography. All essays should opt for endnotes where necessary and refrain from the use of footnotes. For additional details on general stylistic matters, potential writers can write to the Colombo Institute or refer the Chicago Manual of Style (15th Revised Edition, 2003).

More about the journal….

Our effort is to produce a specialized publication which combines crucial features of a journal and a magazine that is open to serious scholarship and exchange of ideas across the region and beyond, on issues that are of central importance to the region with regard to the broad areas covered by the key terms ‘society’ and ‘culture.’ The idea is to enhance access of South Asian writers to a journal that is regionally published, regionally edited and managed and is responsive to intellectual needs, interests and concerns in the areas covered by its thematic focus. The journal is conceived as a regional forum for disseminating and debating ideas across the geographic and national boundaries of South Asia, and beyond. However, it is not meant to be restricted to and parochialized on the basis of this regional or geographic identity.

In terms of conventional disciplinary parameters, the journal would accommodate contributions from the fields of sociology, social anthropology, history, archeology, art history, cultural studies and other related fields of study. More precisely, within and beyond these areas, its interest would be in culture and its extensions that would focus on cultural theory, art history and different domains of the ‘arts’ such as theatre, visual arts, architecture, film, music, dance, and the politics of these domains.

It is a refereed journal and is published annually. Any individual can write to the journal as long as their contributions are in tune with the interests of the journal, relevant to the region and meet with the journal’s specific publishing criteria. The idea for the journal is supported by the Theertha International Artists Collective in Colombo that also publishes its own journal called ArtLab in both Sinhala and Tamil. Khoj International in Delhi further supports the idea. The institutional responsibility for the journal is vested in the Colombo Institute. The journal is produced in Colombo, while Khoj and Colombo Institute facilitate its distribution in the region and beyond.

Deadline for submissions: September 12, 2010

Editorial Board of the Journal

§ Sasanka Perera, Senior Lecturer (Editor), Department of Sociology, University of Colombo, Colombo.

§ Salima Hashmi, Professor and Dean, School of Visual Arts, Beaconhouse National University, Lahore.

§ Jagath Weerasinghe, Professor, Post Graduate Institute of Archeology, Colombo.

§ T. Shanaathanan, Senior Lecturer, Department of Fine Arts, University of Jaffna, Jaffna.

§ Pooja Sood, Director, Khoj International Artists Association and Curator, Apeejay Media Gallery, Delhi.

§ Roma Chatterji, Reader, Department of Sociology, University of Delhi, Delhi.

§ Tariq Jazeel, Lecturer, Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, Sheffield.

Contact details of the Journal

Mailing Address: 4/7, Jeswell Place, Mirihana, Nugegoda, Sri Lanka

Email: sasankap@sltnet.lk, colomboinst@gmail.com

The funders for volume 3 and 4 are Arts Collaboratory, a Hivos and DOEN Foundation program for visual artists’ initiatives in Asia, Africa and Latin America and for exchange with visual arts organizations in The Netherlands in cooperation with Mondriaan Foundation.