All times are in Eastern Standard Time.
Friday, February 26:
12:15 – 12:30pm: Introductory Remarks: David Bell (Princeton/Director, Davis Center)
12:30 – 1:30pm: Colony and Text
Chair: Adhitya Dhanapal (Princeton)
Aparna Balachandran (Delhi University), “Labor, Law and the Early Colonial City: Voices from the Archive”
Robert Travers (Cornell), “A Colonial Revolution in Law? Rethinking Colonial State-Formation in Late Eighteenth Century Bengal”
Shahzad Bashir (Brown), “Nader Shah in the Hands of Sir William Jones: The Prescient Importance of a Shoddy Translation”
Discussant: Gyan Prakash (Princeton)
1:45 – 2:45pm: Lords, Lands, Laws
Chair: Neel Thakkar (Princeton)
Timothy Lubin (Washington & Lee), “Sacred Law as a Device of State-Building: The Case of Gorkha Rule in Nepal”
Nandini Chatterjee (Exeter), “Dealing with the Victors: A Document of Negotiation between Local Landlords and Incoming Marathas from Malwa in 1733”
Divya Cherian (Princeton), “Singing a Different Tune: Concubines at Court”
Discussant: Jonathan Gold (Princeton)
Break-out Conversations (optional): 2:45 – 3:15pm
Saturday, February 27:
10:00am – 11:00am: Dreams and Revolutions
Chair: Niharika Yadav (Princeton)
Sudev Sheth (UPenn), “Revolution from within the Ranks: Political Aspirations in Late-Mughal Gujarat.”
Samira Sheikh (Vanderbilt), “The Despairing Dreams of Shahji Sawai”
Joshua Ehrlich (University of Macau), “Was There a Knowledge Revolution in Eighteenth-Century India?”
Discussant: Elizabeth Thelen (Exeter)
11:15am – 12:15pm: In the Ruins of Empire?
Chair: Saumyashree Ghosh (Princeton)
Raziuddin Aquil (Delhi University), “Ja’far Zatalli-Nazir Akbarabadi-Mirza Ghalib: Some Critical Themes and Issues Intersecting Religion, Gender and Literature in Early Modern North India”
Supriya Gandhi (Yale), “Self-Realization in Late Mughal Delhi: Sant Charandas and His Persianate Disciples”
Abhishek Kaicker (Berkeley), “Proto-Revolution in Mughal Delhi? Etic and Emic Concepts in Indian History”
Discussant: Dan Sheffield (Princeton)
Break-out Conversations (optional): 12:15pm – 12:45pm
Sunday, February 28:
10:00am – 11:00am: Faith and Mobilization
Chair: Chapman Sklar (Princeton)
Muhammad Qasim Zaman (Princeton), “Family Problems: Conflicting Understandings of Islam in a North Indian Family in the 18th and the Early 19th Centuries”
Hasan Siddiqui (University of British Columbia), “The Confessionalization Question and the Late Mughal Empire”
Tyler Williams (Chicago), “The Kingdom of the Guru: Semi-Autonomous Religious Polities in Eighteenth-Century North India”
Discussant: Molly Greene (Princeton)