Decolonization at 60: A Workshop at Boston University

121 Bay State Rd, Boston MA 02215
Wednesday, 18 March 2020, 9:15am – 6:15 PM

Organizer: Jayita Sarkar, Assistant Professor, BU Pardee School

Co-sponsors: BU’s Center for the Study of Asia, African Studies, Latin American Studies, and Institute for Culture, Religion and World Affairs

9:15 – 9:30 AM: WELCOME NOTE Jayita Sarkar, Boston University, Pardee School 

9:30 – 11:00 AM: PANEL #1: Connected Partitions Chair: Ben Siegel, Boston University, History Discussant: Sana Aiyer, MIT 

• Sakura Christmas, Bowdoin College Unnatural Borders: Imperial Japan and the Partition of Inner Mongolia 
• Jayita Sarkar, Boston University Frontiers to Battlefields to Borderlands: Connected Partitions in the Rohingya Question, 1942-52 
• Pankhuree Dube, Dartmouth College Geographies of Migration: Refugees vs. Nomads in the Dandakaranya Project, 1947-1978 

11:00- 12:30 PM: PANEL #2: Religion & Borderlands Chair: Michelle Louro, Salem State University Discussant: Willem Van Schendel, University of Amsterdam 

• Lydia Walker, Institute of Historical Research, London Postcolonial Imperialism: Negotiating between Church, State, and Nation in Nagaland 
• Kalyani Ramnath, Harvard University Checkpoints in South Asia’s Other Partitions 
• Amna Qayyum, Princeton University The Ghosts of Comilla: Contraception, Islamic Thought, and State-making in East Pakistan 

***Lunch Break ***

1:30 – 3:00 PM: PANEL #3: Global Decolonization Chair: Jayita Sarkar, Boston University, Pardee School Discussant: Brooke Blower, Boston University, History 

• Carolien Stolte, Leiden University Feminist Readings of Decolonization Conferences 
• Jessica Samuel, Boston University Economic and Epistemological Violence: 21st-century American Colonialism in the U.S. Virgin Islands 
• Michelle Getchell, US Naval War College Two, Three, Many Vietnams: Che Guevara’s Tricontinental Revolutionary Vision 

▪ Beatrice Wayne, Harvard University How to Hide an Ethiopian Empire: The Eritrean Sovereignty Movement in the Moment of Decolonization 

*** Tea/Coffee Break***

3:15-4:30 PM: ROUNDTABLE Zomia, Deltas and Islands: Critical Political Geography in Decolonization Moderator: Carolien Stolte, Leiden University 

Island: Julian Go, Boston University, Sociology Delta: Debjani Bhattacharyya, Drexel University Zomia— TBD 

5:00 – 6:15 PM: PUBLIC KEYNOTE Prof. Willem van Schendel, Professor of Modern Asian Studies, University of Amsterdam Location TBD, open to public.