BEY ND CURRIES
DOCUMENTING SOUTH ASIAN MEDIA AND CULTURAL STUDIES
IN LOVING MEMORY OF
DR. KATHLEEN ERNDL (1954-2017)
Dr. Kathleen Erndl was a founding and continuing member of the organizing committee for the South Asian Media and Cultural Studies conference. Dr. Erndl always made a thoughtful and supportive contribution to our planning and recruited her students to be part of this conference. Born at the Naval Air Station at Patuxent River in Maryland, Dr. Erndl was a beloved professor and noted South Asian religious scholar in the Department of Religion at the Florida State University. Her love for the South Asian culture began with her travel to Sri Lanka during her sophomore year at New College of Florida. She conducted research and traveled in India frequently, receiving the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship, Fulbright-Hays, and NEH Fellowship. She authored, Victory to the Mother: The Hindu Goddess of Northwest India in Myth, Ritual, and Symbol (Oxford, 1993), co-edited, Is the Goddess a Feminist? The Politics of South Asian Goddesses (NYU Press, 2000), and published articles on Sakta traditions, spirit possession, women's religious expressions, methodology, and gender issues in Hinduism. Her teaching excellence gave her the Advanced Teacher of the Year Award at the Florida State University; she was also a faculty advisor to the FSU Indian Students Association. Her knowledgeable and sincere influence touched students, colleagues, and friends globally. Dr. Kathleen Erndl passed away suddenly in February 2017. Her charm, humor, and partnership are greatly missed, but we appreciate all the assistance she gave to students and faculty at the Florida State University and the broader academic community.
Presents
BEYOND CURRIES
DOCUMENTING SOUTH ASIAN MEDIA AND CULTURAL STUDIES
TABLE OF CONTENTS ORGANIZER'S MESSAGE OVERVIEW SOUTH ASIA AT A GLANCE AIM AND SCOPE CONTRIBUTORS OVER THE YEARS TESTIMONIALS CONFERENCE IN PICTURES SOUTH ASIAN COMMUNITY AT FSU
Organizer's Message The South Asian Media and Cultural Studies annual conference has provided an opportunity for students and faculty from across the university to come together and share their research and questions. It has also been a venue that allows us to reach out to students and scholars from other universities, both in the United States and in South Asia. In recent years we have built up the number of virtual participants, and this format of presentation and discussion has also enabled us to draw upon more speakers in South Asia.
Dr. Stephen D. McDowell Dr. Stephen D. McDowell serves as John H. Phipps Professor of Communication and Assistant Provost for International Initiatives at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida, United States, where he has taught since 1996. He has conducted research on media and communication policies in India and Pakistan, and has made presentations to universities and/or worked to establish university contacts, special programs, and/or academic exchange partnerships with universities in different parts of the world, and also to host visiting scholars at the School of Communication. His research and teaching interests address media policies and new communication technologies in South Asia, Internet governance, international and intercultural communication. Along with articles and book chapters on these topics, he has written a book on India’s communication policies, Globalization, Liberalization and Policy Change: A Political Economy of India’s Communications Sector, and has coauthored, with Phillip Steinberg and Tami Tomasello, Managing The Infosphere: Governance, Technology, and Cultural Practice in Motion.
Organizer's Message In each of six SAMCS annual conferences to date, faculty, students and media professionals have met to assess the quality and impact of South Asian communication media – digital broadcast and print on the region as well as on other parts of the world. The 7th annual conference, which will take place virtually on February 4-6, 2021, will provide the same opportunity in light of current and projected future trends.
Dr. John K. Mayo John K. Mayo is Director of the William A. Kerr Intercultural Education and Dialogue Initiative within Florida State University’s College of Social Sciences and Public Policy. He is also Professor and Dean Emeritus of FSU’s College of Communication and Information. Prior to being named dean in 1994, Dr. Mayo served for 10 years as director of FSU’s Center for International Studies, part of the Learning Systems Institute. He is the author of two books as well as numerous research monographs and journal articles in the fields of development and intercultural communication. His teaching and research interests include development communication; telecommunications policy, the diffusion of innovations, and distance learning. Dr. Mayo directed USAIDsponsored R&D projects in El Salvador, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Peru, and Nepal. He also has served as a consultant to a number of international agencies and on the editorial boards of the Journal of Communication, Communication Theory and Communication for Development and Social Change. In 2000 he produced Witness, a television documentary, in collaboration with the U.S. Lawyers Committee on Human Rights.
Overview The South Asian Media and Cultural Studies (SAMCS) conference is an annual conference hosted at the Center for Global and Multicultural Engagement Building, Florida State University. The conference is co-sponsored by the College of Communication and Information, the College of Social Sciences and Public Policy and the Center for Global Engagement. This annual event seeks to encourage scholars, academicians, and practitioners from the South Asian region to present their work and engage in critical inquiry and free-flowing debate on the region’s socio-political, cultural, economic, media, and technological affairs.
The SAMCS conference provides greater visibility and deepened debate across borders to a rising generation of scholars, strategic thinkers, and practitioners from the subcontinent. Contributors put forth innovative analysis, challenge misperceptions, and engage in a respectful, thoughtful commentary to enhance understanding of the region. The trajectories of state and popular political relationships in South Asia have been shaped historically by diverse forms of regional assertions. Today, as majoritarian nationalism becomes increasingly hegemonic, the conference encourages participants to consider new genealogies of South Asia’s plural and contesting regionalities.
The SAMCS conference seeks to understand the South Asian region through its intersections with the state, but also to go beyond the rationalities of states and their archives. The conference organizing committee, headed by Dr. Stephen McDowell, Assistant Provost and John H. Phipps Professor of Communication in the School of Communication, and Dr. John Mayo, Director of the William A. Kerr Intercultural Education and Dialogue Initiative within Florida State University’s College of Social Sciences and Public Policy, especially invites research that examines regions through various media and cultural sources in South Asian languages in both historical and contemporary contexts.
The South Asian Media and Cultural Studies conference is an alliance of scholars, academicians, and practitioners dedicated to fostering a greater understanding of the region’s global importance. The conference encourages scholars working in relevant areas to attend and reflect upon the field. The first SAMCS conference was organized in 2015 and it has been growing in popularity and size ever since. Over the years, the conference has developed into a unique hybrid event that involves in-person as well as virtual participation by scholars and practitioners from different parts of the South Asian region.
The 7th South Asian Media & Cultural Studies conference will be organized virtually on February 4-6, 2021. The theme for the conference is "South Asia: Beyond Borders."
South Asia At A Glance Of the world’s seven continents, Asia is the largest. Its physical landscapes, political units, and ethnic groups are both wide-ranging and many. Besides Russia, Southwest Asia, and Central Asia, Asian regions include South Asia, East Asia, and Southeast Asia. South Asia extends south from the main part of the continent to the Indian Ocean. The principal boundaries of South Asia are the Indian Ocean, the Himalayas, and Afghanistan. The Arabian Sea borders Pakistan and India to the west, and the Bay of Bengal borders India and Bangladesh to the east. The western boundary is the desert region where Pakistan shares a border with Iran. The current territories of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka form South Asia. South Asia has three of the ten most populous countries in the world: India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The realm is the birthplace of two of the world’s largest religions, Hinduism and Buddhism, but there are also immense Muslim populations and large groups of followers of various other religions as well. The peaceful coexistence of diverse ethnic, religious, and linguistic groups has historically been a hallmark of South Asian cultures. The subcontinent has a long history of human occupation and is an area where cities independently developed and civilization emerged. Few regions in the world have histories as ancient and diverse as South Asia's. And few people realize that South Asia's roots can be traced to the beginnings of human civilization. Current globalizing forces are compelling South Asian countries to establish a trade network and institute economic policies among themselves. South Asia is fast emerging to compete in the world marketplace. Health and primary education and infrastructure have improved significantly in South Asia over the last couple of decades. South Asia also provides an excellent example of colonialism’s role in establishing most of the current political borders in the world. Marked by integration, intellectualism, and spirituality, South Asia's socio-political, religious, economic, media, and cultural history begs to be explored.
South Asia
*Source: The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC)
Aim and Scope The South Asian Media and Cultural Studies Conference (SAMCS) is an alliance of scholars, academicians, and practitioners dedicated to fostering a greater understanding of the South Asian region’s global importance. We encourage scholars working in relevant areas to attend and reflect upon the media and cultural studies centered around the region. Our mission is to examine and discuss diverse aspects of the rapid changes taking place in the media and cultural studies related to South Asia. We also aim to promote scholarship that perceives multidimensional problems of the society and mankind in totality to present them with sagacity, truth, and vision. Given the rapidly changing socio, political, economic climate of South Asia, the major aim of the conference is to enhance an understanding of South Asia among the scholars of the region and beyond. It will also serve as a forum to share fresh thinking and to debate matters of national and regional concern to the countries of South Asia from their perspective. The conference provides an outlet for innovative research, which advances understanding of the core areas of study in all its varied aspects. The conference also provides a forum for disseminating and enhancing theoretical, empirical and pragmatic research across the core areas of this annual event. Contributions are welcome in any appropriate form, including critical research papers, articles, review of significant topics, qualitative and quantitative empirical studies, including case studies and large scale statistical analysis as well as industry reports related to South Asia.
Contributors
The South Asian Media and Cultural Studies conference is a result of a collaborative contribution from faculty, researchers, and students from the Florida State University as well as from other universities and organizations worldwide. Dr. Kathleen Erndl Dr. Kathleen Erndl was a founding and continuing member of the organizing committee for the South Asian Media and Cultural Studies conference. Dr. Erndl always made a thoughtful and supportive contribution to our planning and recruited her students to be part of this conference. Dr. Stephen D. McDowell Stephen D. McDowell serves as John H. Phipps Professor of Communication and Assistant Provost for International Initiatives at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida, United States, where he has taught since 1996. He has conducted research on media and communication policies in India and Pakistan, and has made presentations to universities and/or worked to establish university contacts, special programs, and/or academic exchange partnerships with universities in different parts of the world, and also to host visiting scholars at the School of Communication. Dr. John Mayo John K. Mayo is Director of the William A. Kerr Intercultural Education and Dialogue Initiative within Florida State University’s College of Social Sciences and Public Policy. He also is Professor and Dean Emeritus of FSU’s College of Communication. Prior to being named dean in 1994, Dr. Mayo served for 10 years as director of FSU’s Center for International Studies, part of the Learning Systems Institute. He is the author of two books as well as numerous research monographs and journal articles in the fields of development and intercultural communication. Ayesha Khurshid Ayesha Khurshid is an Assistant Professor of Sociocultural and International Studies of Education in the College of Education. She received her doctorate in Education from the University of WisconsinMadison, and teaches courses on International Development Education, Anthropology of Education, and Multicultural Education.
Dr. Azmat Rasul Azmat Rasul is an Assistant Professor in the College of Communication and Media Sciences at the Zayed University’s Abu Dhabi Campus in the United Arab Emirates. As a Fulbright research scholar, Dr. Rasul earned his Ph.D. and M.A. degrees from the School of Communication at Florida State University. Before joining Zayed University, Dr. Rasul worked as an Exchange Professor for two years at Valdosta State University. Dr. Mariam Shaikh Mariam Shaikh is a former Fulbright scholar and a Ph.D. graduate in Communication from College of Communication and Information, Florida State University, with an interest in the intersection of the fields of communication and emergency management and its influence on the resilience of atrisk communities residing in low-income areas (South-Asian region). Dr. Awais Saleem Awais Saleem is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and Media at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. He teaches broadcasting and journalism courses. He graduated with a Ph.D in summer 2017 from the School of Communication, Florida State University. Dr. Tanu Kohli Bagwe Tanu Kohli-Bagwe is a Teaching Faculty at the Center of Global Engagement. She specializes in interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary teaching on globalization, intercultural communication, and qualitative & quantitative research methods. Dr. Kohli-Bagwe’s research focuses on interdisciplinary learning and intercultural competence development. Vaibhav Diwanji Vaibhav Diwanji is a Ph.D. candidate at the School of Communication, Florida State University. Vaibhav holds an M.Sc. in Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) from Florida State University and an M.B.A in Marketing and International Business from Auckland University of Technology. He has over eight years’ experience in the digital marketing and creative industry.
Rebecca Peters Rebecca Peters is a doctoral student studying the history and ethnography of religion in the Department of Religion at Florida State University. She is exploring how the culture of Hinduism informs film content that Bollywood produces, highlighting the portrayal of gender roles. Stephanie Vivirito Stephanie is the Media Specialist for the College of Communication and Information at the Florida State University. She develops print and digital media for College events and entities. Stephanie earned her B.A. from Florida State University in 2015 with a double major in English (Editing, Writing and Media) and Art History. Asif Shaikh Asif Shaikh is a doctoral candidate at School of Information, Florida State University. His research interests focus on issues of deceptive uses of ICT. Prior to his doctoral studies, as a professional, he worked as an operations consultant, and the project Lead with the State of Florida. Dr. Sourabh Singh Sourabh Singh is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the Florida State University. His primary research interest is the changing relation between social structures and subjectivity. He has developed new insights on how they reproduce and transform each other by studying the history of politics in India during the 1919-1984 period.
Over the Years The 1st South Asian Media & Cultural Studies Conference (January 22-23, 2015) The first SAMCS conference was organized on January 22-23, 2015. The conference began with an “Engage Your World” event, featuring noted Indian filmmaker Somnath Sen as the opening keynote speaker. His talk was entitled, “It’s All Greek and Sanskrit: Reflections on Western and Indian Narratives in Filmmaking.” In addition, the conference included an opening presentation by Dr. Evan Hoffman from Nova Southeastern University addressing peacebuilding in Myanmar. The 2nd South Asian Media & Cultural Studies Conference (January 21-23, 2016) The second SAMCS conference was organized on January 21-23, 2016. The conference began with an “Engage Your World” public event, featuring Dr. Pankaj Chakraborty. It also held an invited faculty research workshop on Saturday, January 23. The 3rd South Asian Media & Cultural Studies Conference (March 4-7, 2017) The third SAMCS conference was organized on March 4-7, 2017. The conference began with an “Engage Your World” public event, “Understanding Bollywood and South Asian Film: Key Contributions.” The 4th South Asian Media & Cultural Studies Conference (February 1-2, 2018) The fourth SAMCS conference was organized on February 1-2, 2018. The conference began with a keynote speech by the former Pakistani Ambassador Hussain Haqqani. The conference also had a panel and film, “Reflecting on Masaan: How modern technology, especially media, impacts lives in modern-day small-town India.” The 5th South Asian Media & Cultural Studies Conference (January 31 - February 1, 2019) The fifth SAMCS conference was organized on January 31- February 1, 2019. The year’s theme was “Cultural Disruptions: Media and Social Change in South Asia.” The conference began with a keynote address on “Peace Communication in South Asia” by Dr. Anup Kumar of Cleveland State University. The 6th South Asian Media & Cultural Studies Conference (February 6-7, 2020) The sixth SAMCS conference was held on February 6-7, 2020. This year’s conference had an open theme of “Rising Voices” in South Asian media and cultural studies. The conference began with an opening keynote address by Dr. Radhika Parameswaran, Herman B Wells Endowed Professor and former Director (2015 to 2019) of the Journalism department in the Media School at Indiana University, Bloomington, who spoke on, “Rising Voices of the Indian Diaspora: A New South Asian Workforce Enters American Journalism.”
Testimonials Anup Kumar "We don’t have many conferences like this one. And because of troubled relationships that two major countries have in South Asia, namely India and Pakistan, it is very difficult to organize an event where scholars from these two countries and other South Asian countries come together and talk about issues surrounding media freedom, freedom of speech, political developments, developmental communications." John Mayo "I have been interested in this event ever since its creation in 2015. And honestly, I think that the event has improved every year." Stephen McDowell "We have scholars from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, as well as South Asian scholars in the UK – a combination of people coming from a distance as well as people participating who are now in South Asia has really enriched the diversity of views and the range of presentations." Stephanie Vivirito "Working with the wonderful organizing committee for the South Asian Media and Cultural Studies Conference is a highlight of the year for me. I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to work with passionate individuals for conference planning and the chance to meet talented scholars from around the world who share their impactful research. This conference is truly a special event that I am proud to be a part of." Awais Saleem, Pakistan "I believe that the South Asian region has a lot of potential. But, it has not been studied well so far. I would encourage everybody to take this opportunity and bring their work here at the South Asian Media and Cultural Studies conference at the Florida State University." Muhammad Rasul, Pakistan "This conference has been very interesting because we have had many scholars present their work virtually, which I have not seen before at other conferences. It was a great intercultural exchange. The conference helps spread the knowledge about South Asia to the students here in the US." S. Beena Butool "Huge demographic and economic changes have happened in South Asia and these societies are changing very fast. They are in a state of transition. It’s important to study their democratic systems as well as their media spheres and this conference brings such an opportunity."
Conference in Pictures
2017
2015-16
2018
2019-20
South Asian Community at Florida State University
Dear South Asian friends and colleagues, We kindly extend our gratitude to all who contribute to the vitality of the South Asian media and cultural studies and practices at the Florida State University. The mission of the South Asian community at the Florida State University is to manifest the intellectual and creative vibrancy of research and practices in the fields of media and cultural studies in and related to the South Asian region. None of this would be possible without the continued support and commitment of our South Asian students, faculty, staff, and friends like you who show support and unconditional love to us. At Florida State University, we are very fortunate to have secured the talents of new students and faculty members who help enhance and diversify the study of South Asia across different departments in the university. South Asian community at our university continues to thrive thanks to the ever-increasing number of students and faculty on the campus. The increased visibility of South Asian scholarship and research has generated a wonderful sense of excitement on the university campus, and we hope to boost student and faculty recruitment and development in the future. Through our programs and conferences, we aim to inspire interest in South Asia. We, at the Florida State University, actively support the teaching and research activities of South Asia-related faculty and their students. The university hosts lectures, colloquia, seminars and conferences on various South Asia related studies in addition to developing financial resources for the enhancement of the South Asian community on the campus. We also support cultural and community activities relating to South Asia and South Asians at the university. The university hosts the South Asian Student Association (SASA) on campus. The purpose of the association is to increase the awareness of South Asians on campus, to preserve the rich cultural heritage of South Asia, and unite South Asians and people of other races by celebrating our diversity. We look forward to your continued participation and support for the South Asian community at the Florida State University. We hope to meet you at one of our many events in the coming years. Thank you!
Co-Sponsors College of Communication and Information Florida State University 4100 University Center, Bldg. C Tallahassee, FL 32306-2651
College of Social Sciences and Public Policy's Ruth K. and Shepard Broad International Lecture Series Florida State University 600 W. College Avenue Tallahassee, FL 32306
Center for Global Engagement Florida State University 110 S. Woodward Avenue Tallahassee FL, 32306
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