Events

Jointly organised by Asia Research Institute and the Religion Cluster, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, NUS.

In the so-called ‘new Asian century’, the idea of ‘Asia’ has come to stand for the ‘new’, rather than the old, suggesting a point of disjuncture between Asia’s heritage (religious or otherwise), its temporally complex present, and its vision for the future. At the broadest level, we ask: how is Asian antiquity made relevant to an Asia that is rewriting itself, and is Asian modernity made distinctive by this relationship? This workshop will provide an opportunity to explore how Hindu textual heritages are appropriated and performed in contemporary contexts, with a comparative focus on India, both an august centre of Asian antiquity and one of the world’s fastest growing new economies, and Bali, an exemplary site for the showcasing of ‘Asian Heritage’ within its context of being a rapidly-modernising Indonesian island. This event will provide a forum to reassess the enduring history of shared religious and literary heritages in India and Bali from a comparative and trans-regional perspective, with a focus on Sanskritic and vernacular textual (or text-like) materials. In so doing, it will highlight the relevance of these premodern materials to the interpretation of contemporary socio-cultural and religious phenomena, and encourage the interaction between academic disciplines focusing respectively on texts, performance, and theory.

CONTACT DETAILS

Convenors:

Dr Andrea Acri
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
Email: ariaa@nus.edu.sg

Dr Andrea Pinkney
South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore
Email: sasamp@nus.edu.sg

Secretariat:
Mr Jonathan Lee
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
Email: jonathan.lee@nus.edu.sg