A nearly-final program is ready!
Category Archives: Announcement
Kumārila conference
The first Kumārila Conference will be held at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto, Mississauga, from May 27th to June 1st, 2024. Venue: Maanjiwe nendamowinan building, Room 3230, UTM.
The conference will bring together experts who will lead two-hour reading sessions on key passages of Kumārila’s texts and provide participants with the necessary tools to understand the hidden gems of Kumārila’s philosophy. More in detail, these sessions will include the reading and commenting on selected passages on a given topic (e.g., adhikāra in Ṭupṭīkā 6.1) and a talk on the topic itself (e.g., mapping the intersection of adhikāra and sāmarthya) and then a discussion session. Besides, there will be opportunities for scholars and advanced students to present their research related to Kumārila in shorter sessions (60′ and 30′).
The conference will be coordinated by Elisa Freschi and Nilanjan Das and will see the participation of other experts in Sanskrit philosophy and philology. Confirmed participants (so far) include Dan Arnold, Tarinee Awasthi, Purushottama Bilimoria, Hugo David, Alessandro Graheli, Ham Hyoung Seok, Kei Kataoka, Malcolm Keating, Lawrence McCrea, Sudipta Munsi, John Nemec, Monika Nowakowska, Andrew Ollett, Parimal Patil, Akane Saito, Wintor Scott, Taisei Shida, Elliot Stern, Angela Vettikkal, Alex Watson and Kiyotaka Yoshimizu.
This will be an in-person only event, since we believe in the power of collective intelligence and collaboration and these are hardly replicable when some participants speak per Zoom and others are in the room. Please consider that we are happy to assist you with invitation letters etc. if you need them for visa purposes, just let us know!
Conference on “Spiritual exercises, self-transformation and liberation in philosophy, theology and religion”
Pawel Odyniec, who is among the foremost experts on Vedānta and on K.C. Bhattacharya, organised a conference that looks extremely thought-provoking on May 22nd–24th. Please read more about the participants (among which Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, James Madaio, Jessica Frazier, Karl-Stephan Bouthilette…) and the program, and how to register at the link below:
https://konferens.ht.lu.se/spiritual-exercises
Workshop on Vaiṣṇava material culture
Workshop on Vaiṣṇava material culture (in South India)
(8—10 December 2021, virtually held per zoom)
Organisers: Suganya Anandakichenin, Elisa Freschi, Naresh Keerthi, Srilata Raman
(Photo by Suganya Anandakichenin)
Please register (with an email stating your interests and affiliation) by December the 1st at this address: elisa.freschi@utoronto.ca (places are limited, apologies in advance if your request cannot be accommodated)
Program:
| 8.12 (vegetable and edible substances) | 9.12 (ritual emblemes) | 10.12 (new lives of texts) | |
| 8:15—8:30 | welcoming address (Srilata) | welcoming address (N+S) | welcoming address (E) |
| 8:30—9:00 | practical demo (Srinivasa Rajan Swami: “A look at the Araiyar’s outfit”) | practical demo (M.A.V. Madhusudanan Svāmī on śaṭharī) | practical demo (Thillaisthanam Parthasarathy: “From traditional to contemporary: Srivaisnava wedding cards”) |
| 9:00—9:45 | Srilata Raman “From Pāyasam to Puḷiyōtarai – Food in Śrīvaiṣṇava Domestic Culture” | Borayin Larios (The Divine Thief and the Solidification of Dairy: Kṛṣṇa’s Butterball in Mahabalipuram) | Ilanit Loewy Shacham “The commentary in the hand of the ācārya” |
| 9:45—10:30 | Andrea Gutiérrez “Feeding Aranganathar “Feeding Devotees: Recovering Recipes from Medieval Temple Inscriptions at Srirangam” | Suganya Anandakichenin “The worship of the Ācārya’s pādukās among the Śrīvaiṣṇavas” | Harshita Mruthinti Kamath “Temple Poems on Copperplates: The Material Life of Annamayya’s Telugu Padams” |
| coffee break | |||
| 10:45—11:30 | Naresh Keerthi “Goddess in a Flowerpot — Towards a Theobotanical Account of Tulasī” | Ute Huesken “A god’s second life: Āti Atti Varatar Vaipavam” | Jonathan Peterson (“Branding the Sensuous Body: Taptamudrā and Material Practice in Early Modern South Asia”) |
| 11:30—12:15 | Vasudha Narayanan “Food for thought, Food for Body and Soul: Srivaishnava Temple Prasada” | Marzenna Czerniak-Drożdżowicz “Material body of god’s representations – how to establish it and how to mend it” | final round table |
| lunch break | |||
| 12:30—13:15 | James Mc Hugh “Preliminary Thoughts on Betel (pān) in Hindu Vaiṣṇava Worship” | practical demo (T.A.Chari and Malini Chari: “Gifting Rāmānuja’s vigraha”) |
Discussants: Anusha Rao, Jesse Pruitt, Mirela Stosic, Manasicha Akepiyapornchai, Sathvik Rayala, Janani Mandayam Comar, Prathik Murali, Giulia Buriola
Professorship of Indology in Leipzig advertised
The Institute of South and Central Asian Studies at the Faculty of History, Arts and Oriental Studies seeks to fill the following professorship from 1 April 2021:
W3-Professorship in Indology
(Successor to Professor Eliahu Franco) (more…)
Post-Doc positions in Global Philosophy of Religion (how exciting!)
I received from Yujin Nagasawa (via Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad):
I am starting a new Templeton-funded project called the Global Philosophy of Religion (https://www.global-philosophy.org/). The aim of the project is to promote research involving philosophers of religion from all religious traditions and geographical regions. As part of the project, we are advertising three postdoctoral fellowships – in Hindu philosophy of religion, Islamic philosophy of religion and Jewish philosophy of religion – as well as a senior lectureship in philosophy of religion (tradition unspecified).
The list of the positions are published here: https://www.global-philosophy.org/vacancies
I would be most grateful if you could forward it to people who may be interested in any of the positions.
—–
Yujin Nagasawa
H. G. Wood Professor of the Philosophy of Religion
School of Philosophy, Theology and Religion
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston, Birmingham
B15 2TT
United Kingdom
Buddhist ethics by Maria Heim
Maria Heim just published a short book on Buddhist ethics, which starts with the problem of the non-existence of ethics as a separate field of philosophy within South Asian philosophy in general and in Buddhist philosophy in particular. She then moves to moral reflections within the dimension of Buddhist practice. The book includes a comparison of Buddhaghosa’s and Śāntideva’s teachings and is freely available online until January the 7th. You can download it here.
Professor by special appointment: Diversifying Philosophy (Amsterdam)
Are you a philosopher with a passion for academic teaching and research in diversifying philosophy? If so, please apply at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU).
Location: AMSTERDAM
FTE: 0.2
Job description
The chair for “Diversifying Philosophy” will contribute to diversifying academic philosophy and making this diversity visible to a broader audience. The professor by special appointment preferably does so through research and teaching in the field of non-Western philosophy.
Your duties
- you will develop and teach a course in the Bachelor of Philosophy and/or a relevant Master track, preferably in the field of non-Western philosophy
- you will do research, preferably in the field of non-Western philosophy, resulting in publications in academic journals and academic lectures, and (preparing) grant applications
- you undertake activities for valorization in the field of your research and teaching, e.g. in the shape of public lectures
- you have a PhD in philosophy and enjoy a good research reputation, as shows from publications in (national and) international media
- you have ample experience in leading philosophy research projects and supervising PhD students
- you have demonstrable experience in translating the results of your research for a broader audience
- you have ample teaching experience and are an inspiring teacher
- you have excellent command of the English language What are we offering? This chair by special appointment (“bijzondere leerstoel”) is a rotating chair. Appointment will be for a period of 2,5 years, with the possibility of a second appointment for another 2,5 years. This chair is non-salaried and is supported with an annual bench fee of € 2.500,-. As desired by the chair holder, work for this chair can either be concentrated in a couple of shorter periods, or spread over the entire period. The appointment is for 8 hours a week on average. In accordance with VU policy, this chair is open only to external candidates. Additionally, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam offers excellent fringe benefits and various schemes and regulations to promote a good work/life balance, such as: a wide range of sports facilities which staff may use at a modest charge (Thanks to Catarina Dutilh Novaes for pointing out this position).
https://workingat.vu.nl/ad/bijzonder-hoogleraar-actuele-themas/xdayuc
Missing comments on this blog
Maciej St. Zięba was kind enough to inform me that several of his comments had never been published on this blog. I checked and they had indeed been blocked (for no reason I can understand, since they included no further links or the like) by my spam filter.
The spam filter, however, also deletes all spam messages after a few days, so that I have no idea about how often this could have happened to other readers.
Should this have happened to you as well, please let me know, so that I can “save” them and include your address among the safe ones.
Thanks for your help!