Colombo Institute » South Asia Journal

CALL FOR PAPERS!

ci — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 12:45:44 +0000

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.

South Asia Journal Volume 2

ci — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 23:51:40 +0000

The South Asia Journal for Culture, Volume 2, is now available. While it is only available in Colombo at the moment, we hope to make it available at a limited number of outlets in selected South Asian cities over the next few months. Due to the delay of SAJC Vol 2, the third issue of the South Asia Journal, now in preparation, will be available by the end of this year as well.

Volume two carries essays from a range of interests that include Siraiki identity dynamics to readings of wayside shrines and women’s art in Sri Lanka. The contents of South Asia Journal, Volume 2:

Essays

The Journey towards ‘Siraiki’

Nukhbah T. Langah

What the Tree Said: An Ethnography of a Wayside Shrine in Sri Lanka

Sunil Goonasekera

Women Artists in Sri Lanka: Are they the Carriers of the Women’s Burden?

Anoli Perera

Reviews and Opinions

Cultural exchange and civil society in Asia: A perspective from India

Rustom Bharucha

Review of Meenakshi Thapan (Ed.,) ‘Transnational Migration and the Politics of dentity.’

Michael Collyer

Photo essay

A journey through intimate space

Jagath Dheerasekara

CALL FOR PAPERS!

ci — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 06:31:23 +0000

South Asia Journal for Culture Volume 3

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 third 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….

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. The initial funds for the publication have come from the Colombo Institute, Theertha International and Hivos to ensure that the first and second issues (2007 and 2008) are published smoothly.

Deadline for submissions: June 30 2009

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.

· Muraleedharan Tharayil, Reader & Head, PG Dept. of English Literature, St. Aloysius College, affiliated to the University of Calicut, Elthuruth, Trichur, Kerala.

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

· Sharon Bell, Professor and Deputy Vice Chancellor, University of Canberra, Canberra.

· 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.

Contact details of the Journal

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

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

South Asia Journal for Culture: Pakistan Launch

ci — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 16:38:17 +0000

The South Asia Journal for Culture held its Pakistan launch on October 26 2008 at the Goethe Institut, Karachchi, organized by the Goethe Institut and Nukta Art. It was organized as part of the South Asia art critics seminar titled ‘The Anxious Century: Discourses Waiting to be Born.’

Sasanka Perera addressed the audience. Following is an excerpt of his address:

“…when the South Asia Journal for Culture is being launched in Karachi, let me also talk a little bit about the politics of marginality because in many ways this journal is an idea that came into existence from within the politics and experiences of marginality as well as the frustrations contextualized earlier. For us, that is Colombo Institute and Theertha International Artists Collective, as two organizations that have worked very closely for the last three years, marginality is a fact of life even though it is not something we have ever considered a domain within which we would be forever imprisoned. In fact, in retrospect, it is clear that it has been the most fundamental force that has invigorated us to do most of what we have done in recent times. What I mean by marginality for us worked at two levels: due to the political changes that took place in Sri Lanka since the 1960s and the resultant brain drain to the former colonial centers, much of the work in the social sciences and humanities produced in Sri Lanka, particularly in the local languages, tended to be pedestrian at best. Most local journals of quality folded up or their work was severely restricted and downgraded. This was one marginality within which we had to work: in other words, we had to work within a relative lack of stimulation in the local intellectual environment. The second marginality was far more encompassing. We found it difficult to access regional and global journals and publishers due to the restrictive work of intellectual gate-keepers who seem to take pride in thinking, experiencing and feeling on our behalf. In this same context, it was not unusual to have conferences in the region itself that were supposedly South Asian in focus but politically marginal entities such as Sri Lanka were often represented by postcolonials who had fled from the periphery to the centers long ago, or were not represented at all. Again, there was a problem of representation of both our experiences and our thinking. But these marginalities did not necessarily translate into mediocrity for those few who were perhaps mad enough to create alternate structures and process.

“Therefore this journal is the result of felt needs and anticipated political and ideological expectations and the logical culmination of a specific history. Talking of history, make no mistake — this is a Sri Lankan effort given that we were responding to locally felt marginalities and frustrations on the one hand. But it was also a South Asian initiative on the other because we were very keen and conscious that the knowledge produced within South Asian and on South Asia should also be known widely in South Asia as well as globally. This is not a mere yearning for a collective South Asian cultural and intellectual identity. More broadly, this was a matter of taking stock of what we think, what we critique, what we question and what we learn about ourselves and the world and finding means to make this knowledge part of the global academic discourse as well. “

South Asia Journal for Culture: India Launch

ci — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 18:30:00 +0000

The South Asia Journal for Culture held its India launch on September 8^th 2008 at Ananth Art Gallery, New Delhi as part of the South Asia Exhibition ‘Six Degrees of Separation: Chaos, Congruence and Collaboration’ organized by Kohj International Artists’ Association.

Sasanka Perera addressed the gathering.

South Asia Journal for Culture: Colombo Launch

ci — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:43:13 +0000

South Asia Journal for Culture, Volume 1 was released at the book launch held at the Goethe Institute on 28th August 2008 with the collaboration of Colombo Institute and Theertha. The event was chaired by Prof. Jagath Weerasinghe and the keynote speech was delivered by Dr. Qadri Ismail, professor of English, University of Minnesota.

Colombo Institute books on display

South Asia Journal for Culture

admin — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 20:18:14 +0000

The South Asia Journal is an annual refereed journal published jointly by the Colombo Institute and the Theertha International Artists’ Collective. It is open to scholarship and exchange of ideas across the region and beyond, on issues that are of central importance to the region that fall under the key term ‘culture’.

The idea of the journal is to enhance access of South Asian writers to a journal that is regionally managed and published and is responsive to intellectual needs, interests and concerns covered by the thematic focus of ‘culture’. The term is broadly defined to encompass contributions from more conventional disciplinary parameters such as sociology, social anthropology, history, archeology, art history and cultural studies to the more specific domains of ‘art’ such as theatre, visual arts, architecture, film, music, dance and literature.

Below is the cover of Issue 1 of the South Asia Journal for Culture and its contents.

Essays

Bawa and Beyond: Reading Sri Lanka’s Tropical Modern Architecture

byTariq Jazeel

Download PDF tariq_jazeel_essay_sajc_vol_1_2007

Orality, Inscription and the Creation of a New Lore

by Roma Chatterji

Download PDF roma-chatterji-essay-sajc-vol-1-2007

Public Space and Monuments: Politics of Sanctioned and Contested Memory

by Sasanka Perera

Download PDF sasanka-perera-essay-sajc-vol-1-2007

Reviews & Opinions