I am pleased to announce the draft programme for the 2020 Spalding Symposium. Booking will open shortly.
Spalding Symposium on Indian Religions
24th – 26th April 2020, University of Edinburgh
Provisional Programme:
Friday 24th April
1.45pm Introduction and welcome
2.00-3.00pm Opening keynote: Oliver Freiberger (University of Texas at Austin) – “Comparing Religion Within and Beyond South Asia”
3.00-3.30pm Tea and coffee
3.30-4.30pm Karl-Stéphan Bouthillette (Ghent University) – ‘The Spiritual Exercise of Comparing Doctrines: A Performative Function of Indian Doxographies’
4.45-6.15pm Postgraduate Papers
Alex Owens (Lancaster University) – ‘The Greening of the Net: A exploration into the sensitive redeployment of Indra’s Net today within the field of environmentalism’
Manu Ato-Carrera (SOAS) – ‘Engaged Buddhism Across the Three Yānas:A Comparative Approach to a Developing Social Philosophy’
Ranjamrittika Bhowmik (University of Oxford) – ‘Mystical Utterances of Sahaja: The Soul-Body Amalgam in Caryāgīti, Tukkhā and Bāul-Fakir Songs of Bengal’
6.15pm Dinner
Saturday 25th April
9.00-10.00am Maria Heim (Amherst College) – ‘Emptiness: Comparing Buddhaghosa and Śāntideva’
10.00-10.30am Tea and coffee
10.30-11.30am Stuart Sarbacker (Oregon State University) – ‘Pātañjala Yoga and Buddhist Abhidharma on Extraordinary Perfections and Accomplishments: A Comparison of Pātañjalayogaśāstra 4.1 and Abhidharmakośa 7.53 on the sources of Siddhi and Ṛddhi’
11.30am-12.30pm Deepak Sarma (Case Western Reserve University) – ‘Comparison as means of colonization, comparison as strategy to controvert: Madhva Vedanta and Christianity’
12.30-1.30pm Lunch
1.30-2.30pm Christopher Austin (Dalhousie University) – ‘Comparing Double Victories and Double Felicities: A Pervasive System of Meaning in Indian Religion and Literature’
2.30-3.30pm Postgraduate Papers
Krishnan Ram-Prasad (University of Cambridge) – ‘The Epic Cinematic Universe: Intertextual characters as a locus of comparison between Sanskrit and Ancient Greek literature’
Preeti Gulati (Jawaharlal Nehru University) – ‘The Royal Hospitality: A Comparative Study of Kingship in Vālmīki’s Rāmāyaṇa and the Jātakas’
3.30-4.00pm Tea and coffee
4.00-5.00pm Mikel Burley (University of Leeds) – ‘‘All is ambivalence’: faith and struggle in the poetry of Rāmprasād Sen and R. S. Thomas’
5.15-6.15pm Keynote: Jacqueline Suthren Hirst (University of Manchester) ‘A Life of Comparisons’
6.15pm Dinner
Sunday 26th April
9.00-10.00am Michael Williams (Austrian Academy of Sciences) – ‘Hindu Theodicies in Comparison: Vyāsatīrtha, John Calvin and the Problem of Suffering’
10.00-11.00am Jonathan Geen (King’s University College, CA) – ‘Comparing for Chronology: Hindu and Jain Narratives of Kidnappings and Rescues’
11.00-11.30am Tea and coffee
11.30am-12.30pm Karen O’Brien-Kop (University of Roehampton) – ‘Proximal reading: Intertextuality, discourse analysis, and synchronic approaches to classical texts on yoga’
12.30-1.00pm Closing remarks
1.00-2.00pm Lunch and then departure
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