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

October 27-29, 2023

Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, 114 Central Ave, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

South Asia is an empirical microcosm of the ecological and epistemological upending caused by climate change. Forming a quarter 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. Climate change has indelibly altered landscapes and people, from Bangladeshi river deltas to Nepali mountaintops to Pakistani deserts to Indian megalopolises to Maldivian islands.

This conference thus 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 and its relation to the nonhuman worlds. Such a perspective links meaning and materiality, ingenuity, imagination, literature and livelihoods, subsistence, and stories.

FRIDAY OCTOBER 27

10:00-10:15 Welcome Address

Iftikhar Dadi, History of Art, Cornell University

10:15-12:00 Panel 1

The Complexities of “Climate Displacement” in Mustang, Nepal – Emily Yeh, Geography, University of Colorado-Boulder

On Monsoons and Mythic Rivers –  Mona Bhan, Anthropology, Syracuse University

Of Disintegrations, Immersions, Scattering, Shifting and Flowing: Towards a Pedagogy of Life – Rupali Gupte, Architecture, School of Environment and Architecture, Mumbai

Discussant – Kaja McGowan, History of Art, Cornell University

1:30-3:15 Panel 2

Living on the Estuary: A New Environmental Consciousness in Contemporary Bangladeshi Architecture – Farhan Karim, Architecture, University of Kansas

The Anthropocene in the Garden – Nida Rehman, Architecture & Urban Design, Carnegie Mellon University

El Niños and the Architecture of Drought in the Eighteenth Century – Sugata Ray, Art History, University of California-Berkeley

Discussant – Esra Akcan, Architecture, Cornell University

SATURDAY OCTOBER 28

9:30-11:15 Panel 3

An Indigenous Geopoetics for the Indian Himalaya – Mabel Gergan, Asian Studies, Vanderbilt University

If You Want Water, Be Prepared for Pipe Bursts – Parismita Singh, Artist and writer, Guwahati

Reading Ice: Indigenous Knowledge and Climate Change Adaptation in Uzma Khan’s Thinner than Skin – Saba Pirzadeh, English, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Lahore

Discussant – Sonal Khullar, Art History, University of Pennsylvania

11:30-12:45 Panel 4

Socio-environmental Imbrications and Epistemological Borderlands – Aparna Parikh, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Pennsylvania State University

Architectures of Exfoliation: (Un)making Urban Lives and Ecologies – Rohit Mujumdar, Architecture, School of Environment and Architecture, Mumbai

Discussant – Neema Kudva, City and Regional Planning, Cornell University

2:15-4:00 Panel 5

Ecologies and Aesthetics of Dissent: Constructing Mediatic Environments of Resistance in Sri Lanka – Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi, Architecture, Barnard College, Columbia University

Migrant Messages: The Monsoon and Dreams of Being Heard – Debashree Mukherjee, South Asian Studies, Columbia University

Reckonings and Speculations in Moving Image Practices – Lalitha Gopalan, Cinema, University of Texas-Austin

Discussant – Iftikhar Dadi, History of Art, Cornell University

SUNDAY OCTOBER 29

10:00-11:45 Panel 6

Daira and the Sentinel: Arrival, Convergence, and Ruination in Southern Theorising – Ahsan Kamal, Pakistan Studies, Quaid-e Azam University, Islamabad

(In)Betweenness of the Soil and the Sky: Urban Spatial Imaginaries of Post-Human Landscapes – Vastavikta Bhagat, Architecture, School of Environment and Architecture, Mumbai

Writing the Anthropocene from the Indian Himalaya – Nayanika Mathur, Anthropology, University of Oxford

Discussant – Anindita Banerjee, Comparative Literature, Cornell University

1:15-3:00 Panel 7

Misreading Climate Change in Bangladesh: How Embankments Worsen Flooding – Camelia Dewan, Social Anthropology, University of Oslo

Après Moi le Deluge: Nature and/as Statecraft at the Sardar Sarovar Dam – Kajri Jain, Art History, University of Toronto

After the Country: Agrarian Change in the Eastern Himalayas – Sarah Besky, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University

Discussant – Llerena Searle, Anthropology, University of Rochester

Supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Central New York Humanities Corridor. Cosponsored by the Johnson Museum of Art and its Stoikov Asian Art Lecture Fund.