Lecture Series: April and May, 2009

Partitions, Divisions, and Population Exchanges

In April and May 2009, CIS will present a variety of events on the theme of "Partitions, Divisions, and Population Exchanges," culminating with a May 1-2 conference on Partition Violence.

Through the lecture series, sculpture exhibition, and film screening and discussion, we take a comparative and humanistic approach to partitions, featuring scholars whose work examines the representation, narration, and memorialization of experiences of partition and related forms of population exchange or forced relocation.

The conference on Partition Violence will bring social scientists together to examine causes of violence and local level variation in levels of violence during the India/Pakistan partition, with a goal of understanding how violence and the spread of violence might be mitigated in other cases of population transfer and exchange.

Many of the events are cosponsored with the South Asia Language and Area Center and the Committee on Southern Asian Studies. Other cosponsors of individual events include the Department of Visual Arts (DOVA), the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the Center for East European and Russian/Eurasian Studies, and International House.

  • FRIDAY, APRIL 3 - FRIDAY, APRIL 17
    Pritika Chowdhry, "What the Body Remembers"
    Sculpture exhibit at the DOVA Temporary Gallery, 5228 S. Harper Ave..
    Gallery hours and additional information are available at the DOVA Temporary website.
  • TUESDAY, APRIL 14 • 4:00-6:30 PM, Classics 110
    Kyeong-Hee Choi, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago
    "South Korean Women Writers' Representations of National Division"
    and
    Asli Igsiz, Department of World Literature, Simon Fraser University
    "Reading Through Personal Maps and Recipes of 'Origin': Recollecting Fragments of the 1923 Greco-Turkish Compulsory Religious Minority Exchange"
  • THURSDAY, APRIL 23 • 4:00 PM, Franke Institute
    Keith Brown, Associate Professor, Watson Institute, Brown University
    "Of Devolution and Disillusion: Micropartition in modern Macedonia"
  • MONDAY, APRIL 27 • 4:30 PM, Classics 110
    Kumkum Sangari, Vilas Professor of English, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
    On women's narratives of the Partition of India and Pakistan
  • THURSDAY, APRIL 30 • 6:00-8:00 PM, International House Assembly Hall
    Special World Beyond the Headlines Event: Tariq Ali, Novelist, historian, and New Left Review editor
    "Partition, 60 Years On," a screening and discussion of the 1987 film Partition, adapted by Tariq Ali from Saadat Hasan Manto's famous short story "Toba Tek Singh" and directed by Ken McMullen.
  • MAY 1-2
    Workshop: Partition Violence
    Organized by Steven Wilkinson, cosponsored by the Committee on Southern Asian Studies