The Next Monsoon: Climate Change and Contemporary Cultural Production in South Asia

About This Event

South Asia is an empirical microcosm of the ecological and epistemological upending caused by climate change. Forming ¼ of the world's population and inhabiting tremendous cultural and geographic diversity, South Asia provides a unique case study for examining the challenges of climate change on diverse cultural forms, from Bangladeshi deltas to Nepali mountaintops to Pakistani deserts to Indian megalopolises to Sri Lankan beaches. This conference asks: How is climate change rendered in visual arts, cinema, literature, and architecture in South Asia? How do projects of cultural expression render visibility to place-based narratives in South Asia? A humanistic approach to climate change entails developing modes of attention to a world yet to come. Centering the human imagination in the scientized field of climate change engenders a view of environmental variation over time that highlights the flexibility, resilience, and persistence of human life in relation to nonhuman worlds.

Featured Guests

• Rohit Muzumdar, School of Environment and Architecture
• Bhagat Vastavikta, School of Environment and Architecture
• Parismita Singh, Guwahati Rupali Gupte, School of Environment and Architecture
• Ahsan Kamal, Quaid-e Azam University
• Saba Pirzadeh, Lahore University of Management Sciences
• Camelia Dewan, University of Oslo
• Nayanika Mathur, University of Oxford
• Kajri Jain, University of Toronto
• Sugata Ray, University of California-Berkeley
• Emily Yeh, University of Colorado-Boulder
• Lalitha Gopalan, University of Texas-Austin
• Jason Cons, University of Texas-Austin
• Farhan Karim, University of Kansas
• Mabel Gergan, Vanderbilt University
• Nida Rehman, Carnegie Mellon University
• Aparna Parikh, Pennsylvania State University
• Sonal Khular, University of Pennsylvania
• Debashree Mukherjee, Columbia University
• Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi, Barnard College

Co-sponsors

National Endowment for the Humanities