The Ninth International Conference on Maharashtra.
Call for Papers
Beginning in 1984, a select group of scholars interested in the western Indian state of Maharashtra began meeting to share their research on the region. This group was made up of anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, historians, as well as students of the arts, literature and religion. Coming from India, North America, Europe, Australia and Japan, they have now collaborated eight times, and produced ten volumes of their collected essays on Maharashtra. The group has met in Arizona and Bombay, Toronto and Germany, Sydney and Moscow. Members of the group have alternately taken responsibility for organizing each meeting and publishing the fruits of those conferences. They have also had the opportunity of interacting with Maharashtrians now living abroad in cities like Sydney and Toronto.
The Ninth International Conference on Maharashtra, is being planned at Macalester College in St Paul, Minnesota. Macalester, the alma mater of U.N. General Secretary Kofi Annan, has a rich tradition of internationalism, and every year sends students to Maharashtra on an intensive study-abroad program. Macalester has agreed to host the event on June 6-10, 2001. The Conference invites proposed papers on the theme "Maharashtra: Looking Inward, Looking Outward." Papers may address the many ways Maharashtrians have interacted with people outside Maharashtra over the course of the last seven hundred years, and how this interaction affected their construction of maharashtrian identity/ identities.
Scholars interested in attending the Conference should send abstracts of their papers to Professor James W. Laine, Dept. of Religious Studies, Macalester College, St Paul MN 55105-1899. An anonymous panel of scholars will be formed to consider all abstracts, and those papers that show promise and best fit the theme of this conference will be accepted. Once that process is complete, formal invitations to the conference will be made. There will be two deadlines for this process. Those who submit proposals by November 21, 2000 will be accepted or rejected by December 21, 2001. Those who submit for the second round (before February 1, 2001) will be selected for the remaining places by March 1, 2001. The conference will be held at Macalester College, where accomodation will be provided at very modest rates. There will be a conference fee of $100.