Himalayan Studies Conference 6
The Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies (ANHS) is happy to announce that the Himalayan Studies Conference 6 will take place from October 13–16, 2022, at the University of Toronto, on the traditional lands of the Huron-Wendat, Seneca, and Mississaugas of the Credit.
ANHS invites scholars of Himalayan Studies, development and planning practitioners, artists as well as activists to submit proposals for panels, roundtable discussions and individual papers.
The conference's main focus is "Himalayan Futures." The Himalayas, which lie between the Indian subcontinent's lowlands and the Tibetan Plateau, have become a gripping image in current speculations about the meaning of the present and the Anthropocene's future prospects. The mountain range is at the epicenter of regional and worldwide concerns about climate change's effects. Its ice-capped peaks are the source of Asia's major river systems – but melting snow and receding glaciers herald a possible disaster in a region that is warming faster than the world average, affecting millions of people downstream through extreme weather events. Infrastructure expansion and extractivist capitalism are adding to the region's geological instability. Increasing state control, border conflicts, and territory claims tensions have emerged as a result of these developments, further complicating the geopolitical stakes for Himalayan countries and others with interests in the region. In the meantime, communities experience, imagine, and navigate change in a variety of ways over time, resulting in a broad range of cultural, artistic, and activist expressions.
HSC6 aspires to question and upend popular apocalyptic and crisis discourses, as well as the linear temporalities in which they are situated. The conference will cover a wide range of topics, from ethnic politics and insurgencies to literature, arts, and religion, in order to examine everyday lives, memories, and future imaginaries in the Anthropocene. We aim to highlight how Indigenous, Dalit, and other historically marginalized communities keep witness, maintain hope, and act in the present. The conference will engage multidisciplinary perspectives of struggle and solidarity in the forging of shared Himalayan futures by imagining alternative understandings and trajectories of environmental, social, and political transformation.
Topics that could be discussed include, but are not limited to:
- Politics, practices and institutions of climate change governance
- Indigenous ecopolitics and ontological frictions
- Utopian imaginaries in arts and literature
- Religious explorations of time and change
- Earthquakes and other natural disasters
- Affective ecologies and multispecies habitats
- Decolonization and movements for environmental justice
- Infrastructure investment, resource extraction and uneven development
- Borders, militarization and securitization
- Health, race/ethnicity and the environment
- Cities, architecture and urban planning
- Trade, migration and transnationalism
- Activist movements, practices and modes of expression
- Politics of knowledge production about the Himalayas
While adherence to the conference theme is not required for approval, submissions that connect to Himalayan futures are highly welcome.
SUBMISSION PROCESS
You can organize and speak in more than one panel or roundtable. Proposals must mention the name of all authors/contributors and their titles, institutional affiliations and emails. Proposals must also include a title and abstract (max. 250 words). Please make sure to send your complete proposal to conference@anhs-himalaya.org before the deadline for submissions on April 10, 2022.
You will receive information about the acceptance of your proposal by May 15, 2022.
View the full notice here.