The Interwoven project draws together an interdisciplinary group of scholars and practitioners in the arts to lay the foundations of a new paradigm for understanding movement, practice, materiality, and embodiment in a continuum of exchange across long temporal arcs and geographic itineraries unbounded by national borders in the Indian Ocean region. Featuring scholars, musicians, dancers, and curators from South Asia, Europe, and North America, the two-week program consisted of a series of roundtables, keynote lectures, and the screening of a silent film with accompanying live performances. The interactive nature of the capstone events reflected the richness of the interwoven paradigm of understanding, as well as point to the ways the methodologies explored will contribute to future scholarship. The panels were comprised of pre-recorded lectures by individual panelists and synchronous discussions that brought panelists together in real-time. Please be sure to watch the pre-recorded lectures before the live sessions. Visit the Interwoven website to learn more.

Opening Comments

Philip Bohlman, Ludwig Rosenberger Distinguished Service Professor in Jewish History, Department of Music and the Humanities in the College, University of Chicago

Performance: Peshkaar in Raga Chandrakauns

Ameera Nimjee, Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology, School of Music and Asian Studies, University of Puget Sound (kathak dance)

Bertie Kibreah, Programming Coordinator, The Franke Institute for the Humanities, University of Chicago (tabla)

Tomal Hossain, PhD Student in Ethnomusicology, Department of Music, University of Chicago (harmonium)

Collections, Collecting, and Display: Individual and Institutional Collectors Across Time and Space

Indian Ocean images and sonic presentations have been prized from millennia prior to the Common Era through to the present. They have been collected and stored as sonic memories and as physical objects, finding homes in various locations within the region and as migrants to elsewhere in the world. They have been transmitted across generations and eras as revered original art or artifacts and for more than a century as embodied in new media. This panel explored practices of collecting, transmission, ownership, and presentation of sound and visual objects.

Panelists

Niall Atkinson (Introduction), Associate Professor of Art History, Romance Languages and Literature, and the College, University of Chicago

James Nye (Introduction), Bibliographer for Southern Asia, retired, and Associate in the Humanities Division, University of Chicago

Ronald Radano (Panel Keynote), Emeritus Professor of African Cultural Studies and Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Zoé Headley, Chargée de recherche, Co-directrice du CEIAS, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris

Kenneth X. Robbins, Psychiatrist, Collector of South Asian art, and Independent Scholar

This symposium was co-sponsored by the Committee on Southern Asian Studies (COSAS), the Department of Art History, the Department of Cinema and Media Studies, and the Department of Music at the University of Chicago.