Events at the Centre for Contemporary Studies
Events in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013
| 218. | The Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute
of Science |
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Invites you to a talk on |
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Speaker: |
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Date & time: Monday, 26th Dec 2011, Time: 4:00
p.m. |
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All are cordially invited |
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Aravind Adiga’s most recent novel, Last Man in Tower, is, like The White Tiger, a novel of the new India in which the prospect of sudden wealth spurs a murder. I will explore how Adiga uses the genre of intrigue to throw into relief the social and ethical contradictions of this brave new world. |
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| Podcast (audio recording) of the talk is available in mp3 format (80.4 Mb). (For more podcasts please click here...) | ||
| 217. |
The Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute
of Science |
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Invites you to a talk on Speaker: |
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Date & Time: Tuesday,
20th Dec 2011, Time: 4:00 p.m. |
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| All are cordially
invited |
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I explore the manner in which animals were encountered by the British and the French during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in the Indian subcontinent. It is possible to read into the natural history of animals in the Euro-colonised subcontinent of India a double marginalisation, the first, one of a metropolitan-peripheral relationship, with the intellectual and administrative centre located in a distant city in Europe, for instance, London or Paris; and the second the somewhat grudging and belated attention paid to the study of animals in comparison to more frontline enterprises such as those of botany, which carried extensive commercial and economic value. I seek to revisit such a reading, in an attempt to introduce a certain level of nuance, if not complete reconceptualisation. Recognising that the science of zoology itself was inchoate at the turn of the nineteenth century, I submit that the study of faunistic natural history was a site both of contest and cooperation in India between rival European potentates, the French and the British, both of whom relied largely upon access to indigenous interlocutors in the making of such knowledge. The treatment of flora and fauna by the British was shaped by the desire to legitimise their own rule through the assumption of the trappings of the Mughal emperors who they saw themselves as succeeding, following large-scale territorial and political acquisition through much of the subcontinent in the wake of the Battle of Plassey in 1757. Although European systems of classification as organising principles grew in this period, the influence of indigenes was more than merely that of informants: they were indeed full-fledged interlocutors, even if not always in a symmetrical position with Europeans. |
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| Podcast (audio recording) of the talk is available in mp3 format (71.1 Mb). (For more podcasts please click here...) | ||
| 216. | The Centre for Contemporary Studies, Indian Institute
of Science |
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| Discussion with Melanie Mohren and Bernhard Herbordt | ||
Date & Time: Friday,
16th December 2011, Time: 4:00 p.m. |
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Abstract: Alles was ich habe - All that I have’ is a long-term, artistic research project dedicated to investigations, imaginations and sketches of possibly upcoming futures. Migrating through different media (theatre, exhibition and debate) various performative and discursive strategies present, continue and transform the research process and explore its collected material. |
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About the Speakers:
Melanie Mohren (*1979 in Bonn) and Bernhard Herbordt (*1978 in Würzburg)
graduated with distinction from the renowned Institute of Applied Theatre
Sciences at the Justus-Liebig-University in Giessen in 2005 and are
working together on collaborative interdisciplinary projects since 2000.
Their space and audio installations, radio plays, performances, music
theatre productions and exhibition projects have been produced and presented
at various international venues, theatres, galleries and festivals. |
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| 215. | The Centre for Contemporary Studies,
Indian Institute of Science |
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Panel discussion on the occasion of
the launch of a book by Praful Bidwai: |
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Panellists: |
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Date & Time: Thursday,
1st December, 2011, 4 p.m. |
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All are cordially invited |
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Abstract:
Irreversible, catastrophic climate change caused by greenhouse-gas emissions
represents the greatest threat to humankind today. The earth can cope
with a maximum global warming of 1.5-2°C. But temperatures will
probably rise by 3-4°C-plus. Yet, the world has failed to agree
on drastically and equitably reducing emissions by 2020. What explains
the failure and its impact on the global developmental crisis? What
responsibility should the industrialised countries, historically culpable
for climate change, assume? What should the BASIC (Brazil-South Africa-India-China)
grouping of emerging big emitters, do? Can the negotiations be rescued?
What should India do irrespective of them, for the sake of its vulnerable
people? The book grapples with these issues. |
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About the
Author: Praful Bidwai is an independent columnist, social science
researcher and environmental activist. A former Senior Editor of The
Times of India, he currently holds the Durgabai Deshmukh Chair in Social
Development, Equity and Human Security at the Council for Social Development,
Delhi. Bidwai is a Fellow of the Transnational Institute, Amsterdam. |
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| Podcast (audio recording) of the talk is available in mp3 format (88.1 Mb). (For more podcasts please click here...) | ||
| 214. | The Centre for Contemporary Studies,
Indian Institute of Science |
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Invites you to a one-day seminar on “The History of Science and Technology in 20th Century
India”
on Saturday, 15 October 2011. The seminar will be held at CCS, IISc, Bangalore 12. |
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| Program 0900-0915h 0915-1015h |
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1015-1045h 1045-1145h 1145-1245h 1245-1400h 1400-1500h 1500-1530h 1530-1630h 1630-1730h 1730h |
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| 213. | CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY STUDIES URL: http://ces.iisc.ernet.in/hpg/ragh/ccs |
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Invites you to a talk titled "How I
Became a Novelist"  |
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Speaker: Prof. S. L. Bhyrappa |
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| Date & Time:Tuesday , 15th September
2011, 4.00 p.m. Venue: CCS Seminar Hall, IISc, Bangalore 12. (Note: We have shifted to the former JNCASR, near the Health Centre) |
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All are cordially invited
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About the
speaker: Prof. S.L. Bhyrappa is the bestselling novelist in
the southern Indian language of Kannada over the last 45 years, the
bestselling novelist in Marathi over the past two decades and he has
been a top five bestselling author in Hindi. He is a serious literary
artist, always concerned with fundamental human conditions and predicaments.
In addition to his profound knowledge of Indian philosophical and cultural
traditions, Professor Bhyrappa has since childhood had intense personal
experiences in both rural and urban settings. Drawing on this, his characters grow from the Indian soil. Seminars have been and are being held on his novels, and many volumes of literary criticism have been published on his works. His books have been assigned to the curriculum of undergraduate and postgraduate degree courses by the universities in the state of Karnataka and have been the subject of Ph.D dissertations. |
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| Podcast (audio recording) of the talk is available in mp3 format (75.4 Mb). (For more podcasts please click here...) | ||
| 212. | CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY STUDIES URL: http://ces.iisc.ernet.in/hpg/ragh/ccs |
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| Invites you to a Public Lecture on "Video-movies,
Spirits and the Popular Imagination" |
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Speaker: Prof. Birgit Meyer Professor, Department of Anthropology, VU University, Amsterdam |
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Date & Time:Tuesday , 23rd August, 6:00 p.m |
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All are cordially invited
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Abstract:
This presentation takes the Ghanaian video-film industry as a case to
analyze the deployment of the popular imagination in a setting of neo-liberal
media deregulation which offers unprecedented possibilities for people
to seize the hitherto state-dominated medium of cinema, screening and
making public an alternative imagery. Based on twenty years of historical
and ethnographic research, this lecture focuses on a salient aspect
of video-movies: the depiction of spirits on screen and their indebtedness
to Pentecostalism (the fastest growing variant of Christianity in Africa).
Next to pictures, a number of clips will be presented that suggest a
framing of movies as a revelation through which the operation of what
happens in the “spiritual realm” is exposed, and it will
be proposed that the camera itself is made to operate as an all-seeing
“eye of God.” The central point is to argue that the use
of audio-visual technologies is embedded in a Christian imaginary, thereby
bringing about a “techno-religious realism” through which
moving pictures are vested with an aura of truth. The presentation will
end with a brief reflection on how the case relates to three broader
issues: 1) the role of pictures in the imagination of community, 2)
religion and the question of materiality, and 3) the contribution of
cultural anthropology to the study of visual culture in a global setting.
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| Podcast (audio recording) of the talk is available in mp3 format (84.8 Mb). (For more podcasts please click here...) | ||
| 211. | CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY STUDIES URL: http://ces.iisc.ernet.in/hpg/ragh/ccs |
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| Invites you to a public lecture on "The
Tanjore Enlightenment, 1798-1832" |
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Speaker: |
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Date & Time:Thursday
, 18th August, 4:00 p.m All are cordially invited |
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The enlightenment
project was far from monolithic and Europe was hardly its limit. By
their links to global networks at least a few Indian elites came under
the impact of European intellectual developments at the turn of the
nineteenth century, generating a revolutionary intellectual ferment,
the specificities of which have not yet been wholly acknowledged or
critically examined by historians of modernity, whose focus has predominantly
been the European metropolis or its peripheries. Mapping the geographical
location and circulation of enlightenment ideas, objects and knowledge
over and across space is crucial to an understanding of 'how the Enlightenment
was made and what, actually it was'. This lecture series aims to contribute
to a greater understanding of enlightenment on the colonial "periphery"
by examining the cross-cultural encounters at the Tanjore Court in South
India under the reign of Raja Serfoji II (1798-1832) in the fields of
medicine, natural history, experimental philosophy and music. |
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| Lecture 4:"European Airs": Musical Modernity at the Tanjore Court under the reign of Raja Serfoji II, 1798-1832 | ||
Abstract:Although
the Maratha kings of Tanjore, without exception, were all great patrons
of music, it was not until the reign of Raja Serfoji-II (1798-1832)
that western musical instruments like the violin and the clarinet were
incorporated into the indigenous musical tradition and the earliest
known non-European military musical ensemble, the Tanjore Band, constituted.
The paper argues that if the European discovery of Indian music at the
Oudh Court in the late eighteenth century gave birth to the "Hindustani
Airs" (Indian tunes, collected as oriental souvenirs, written in
staff notation and arranged for Western instruments), the contemporaneous
and even converse Indian or more specifically Tanjorean response to
Western music was the creation of the hybrid genre called "European
Airs" or "Nottusvara sahityas" (Indian songs set to Western
tunes, for being sung or played on Indian instruments). Today this modern
genre, with its origins in Tanjore, and best represented by the Jatisvaras
of Muthuswamy Dikshitar has become part of the South Indian musical
canon. Aurality (as opposed to ocularity) revolving around the making
of the listening subject has figured only in recent years in the literature
on modernity. The experience of modernity has largely been understood
in terms of the visual: of technologies of vision, observation and the
constitution of the observing subject. Locating the place of aurality
in the shaping of modernity in a colonial context, the lecture explores
the material and social matrices of music making in South India and
in particular the Tanjore Court's cultural response to Western music
at the turn of the nineteenth century. |
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| Podcast (audio recording) of the talk is available in mp3 format (87.7 Mb). (For more podcasts please click here...) | ||
| 210. | CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY STUDIES URL: http://ces.iisc.ernet.in/hpg/ragh/ccs |
|
| Invites you to a public lecture on "The
Tanjore Enlightenment, 1798-1832" |
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Speaker: |
 |
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Date & Time:Thursday , 11th August, 4:00 p.m All are cordially invited |
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The enlightenment
project was far from monolithic and Europe was hardly its limit. By
their links to global networks at least a few Indian elites came under
the impact of European intellectual developments at the turn of the
nineteenth century, generating a revolutionary intellectual ferment,
the specificities of which have not yet been wholly acknowledged or
critically examined by historians of modernity, whose focus has predominantly
been the European metropolis or its peripheries. Mapping the geographical
location and circulation of enlightenment ideas, objects and knowledge
over and across space is crucial to an understanding of 'how the Enlightenment
was made and what, actually it was'. This lecture series aims to contribute
to a greater understanding of enlightenment on the colonial "periphery"
by examining the cross-cultural encounters at the Tanjore Court in South
India under the reign of Raja Serfoji II (1798-1832) in the fields of
medicine, natural history, experimental philosophy and music. |
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| Lecture 3:Science as Spectacle: Electrical and Chemical Amusements at the Tanjore Palace, 1798-1832 | ||
Abstract:
Science was spectacle and commodity during the late enlightenment. The
Leyden jar, vacuum pump, and electricity machine were instruments of
‘wonder’ owned by every gentleman of science in India including
a few Indian elites like Raja Serfoji II of Tanjore. The ‘subtle
fluids’ of nature, which occupied the late eighteenth-century
vitalists, were electricity and air. Electricity epitomised experimental
philosophy in practice, not only because of its visually attractive
and dramatic nature but also the nature of instruments used in the experiments.
From the late eighteenth century, publications on static and medical
electricity and also chemistry found wide circulation in India. In contrast
to mechanics, chemistry began to be perceived as dynamic, fundamental
and capable of revealing the secrets of matter. It was also an age of
scientific dictionaries and encyclopaedias like C. Hutton’s Mathematical
and Philosophical Dictionary, Andrew Ure’s and William Nicholson’s
dictionaries of chemistry, all of which reached the Tanjore palace at
the turn of the nineteenth century, sometimes within months of their
publication. |
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| Podcast (audio recording) of the talk is available in mp3 format (86.5 Mb). (For more podcasts please click here...) | ||
| 209. | CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY STUDIES URL: http://ces.iisc.ernet.in/hpg/ragh/ccs |
|
| Invites you to a public lecture on "The
Tanjore Enlightenment, 1798-1832" |
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Speaker: |
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Date & Time:Thursday , 30th June 4:00 p.m All are cordially invited |
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The enlightenment
project was far from monolithic and Europe was hardly its limit. By
their links to global networks at least a few Indian elites came under
the impact of European intellectual developments at the turn of the
nineteenth century, generating a revolutionary intellectual ferment,
the specificities of which have not yet been wholly acknowledged or
critically examined by historians of modernity, whose focus has predominantly
been the European metropolis or its peripheries. Mapping the geographical
location and circulation of enlightenment ideas, objects and knowledge
over and across space is crucial to an understanding of 'how the Enlightenment
was made and what, actually it was'. This lecture series aims to contribute
to a greater understanding of enlightenment on the colonial "periphery"
by examining the cross-cultural encounters at the Tanjore Court in South
India under the reign of Raja Serfoji II (1798-1832) in the fields of
medicine, natural history, experimental philosophy and music. |
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| Lecture 2: Natural History as Vital Economy: Describing Nature in Tanjore in the early Nineteenth Century. | ||
Abstract:
Acquisition of useful knowledge, progress in medicine, moral improvement
and scientific experimentation marked the period called the late enlightenment.
In Raja Serfoji’s world, medicine, natural history and God were
intimately linked. To him, the practice of medicine was not merely an
intellectual engagement, but also a practical one involving activities
like the collection of medicinal plants, their propagation in gardens,
preparation of a hortus siccus, and the extraction and preparation of
medicines. Serfoji also collected a large number of animals and birds,
which he housed in a menagerie, and cultivated the science of veterinary
medicine and animal management. Through these ‘vectors of assemblage’
he developed a distinct and modern method of describing nature, which
combined empiricism with a sympathetic and intuitive understanding of
living nature rooted in the Hindu tradition, blurring the boundaries
between object and observer. |
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| Podcast (audio recording) of the talk is available in mp3 format (98.8 Mb). (For more podcasts please click here...) | ||
| 208. | CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY STUDIES URL: http://ces.iisc.ernet.in/hpg/ragh/ccs |
|
| Invites you to a public lecture on "The
Tanjore Enlightenment, 1798-1832" |
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Speaker: |
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Date & Time: Thursday , 16th June 4:00 p.m All are cordially invited |
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| The enlightenment
project was far from monolithic and Europe was hardly its limit. By
their links to global networks at least a few Indian elites came under
the impact of European intellectual developments at the turn of the
nineteenth century, generating a revolutionary intellectual ferment,
the specificities of which have not yet been wholly acknowledged or
critically examined by historians of modernity, whose focus has predominantly
been the European metropolis or its peripheries. Mapping the geographical
location and circulation of enlightenment ideas, objects and knowledge
over and across space is crucial to an understanding of 'how the Enlightenment
was made and what, actually it was'. This lecture series aims to contribute
to a greater understanding of enlightenment on the colonial "periphery"
by examining the cross-cultural encounters at the Tanjore Court in South
India under the reign of Raja Serfoji II (1798-1832) in the fields of
medicine, natural history, experimental philosophy and music. |
||
| Lecture 1: Making Sense of the Human Body: Study of Anatomy at the Tanjore Court (1798-1832) | ||
Abstract:
One of the chief subjects of study in the age of the enlightenment was
anatomy. Artists and surgeons collaborated to produce multi-layered
descriptions and naturalistic images of the human body. In the eighteenth
century, the human body had been transformed into a new and discrete
object thanks to a "dissecting gaze " that enveloped not just
the outer body but also the insides. The clinical examination of the
body under the grid of an "anatomical atlas" rendered the
body objective, material and above all "real". Western medicine
in the early nineteenth century stressed the importance of clinical
observation and post-mortems and for this reason was rationalised as
scientific and objective in contrast to the practice of Indian physicians
who disregarded this aspect. In this context, the historiographical
significance of Serfoji's study of anatomy, "the vile"aspect
of Western medicine, as early as 1805, with the help of skeletons, prepared
bodies, coloured plates and surgical instruments, acquired through European
friends and commercial agents, is immense and demands serious attention. |
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| Podcast (audio recording) of the talk is available in mp3 format (108 Mb). (For more podcasts please click here...) | ||
| 207. | CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY STUDIES URL: http://ces.iisc.ernet.in/hpg/ragh/ccs |
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| Invites you to a public lecture on "Science
Looks at Traditional knowledge" |
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Speaker: |
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| Date & Time: Monday,
13th June 4:00 p.m All are cordially invited |
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Abstract:
This talk seeks to illustrate how science helps production
of scientific knowledge out of traditional practices. It starts off
from the widely accepted distinction between traditional knowledge and
science that the two are mutually exclusive and opposed to each other
- a matter of tacit recognition ever since the rise of science. The
talk goes further by defining traditional knowledge as inherited aggregate
of beliefs, implicit, deep, holistic, and axiomatic, and uncritically
accepted by peoples of small cultural identities. Traditional knowledge
is a cumulative body of knowledge diffused in practices and beliefs,
evolved by adaptive processes and handed down through generations under
cultural transmission. This knowledge, embedded in local cultural practices
and based on the lived experience of working out subsistence and survival
strategies against natural threats, can persist so long as the culture
is not disrupted.Culture always continues through changes, but disruption
breaks the continuum and that is the order of the globalizing world
today. Inherited knowledge as a cultural conglomerate disappears in
the process. Hence science has to look at the arc before it sinks forever. |
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| Podcast (audio recording) of the talk is available in mp3 format (122 Mb). (For more podcasts please click here...) | ||
| 206. | Centre for Contemporary Studies URL: http://ces.iisc.ernet.in/hpg/ragh/ccs |
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| Invites you to a Public lecture on "Why
is Modern Medicine Stuck in a Rut?" |
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| Speaker: Prof. Indraneel Mittra Dr. Ernest Borges Chair in Translational Research & Professor Emeritus, Department of Surgical Oncology, Tata Memorial Center, Mumbai. |
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Date & Time: Thursday,
21st April 2011, 4:00 pm All are cordially invited |
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Abstract:
There is a growing perception that modern medicine is approaching a
state of crisis characterized by creative inertia, non-innovation, and
non-productivity. Compared to the remarkable progress during the first
30 years after World War II, the last 30 years have been characterized
by a self-congratulatory illusion of progress, the fruits of which have
failed to reach our patients.The problem may lie with the fact that
the (often lone) clinical innovator of the past who made all the difference
to the spectacular progress of medicine during the golden age has been
marginalized to the extent that he is now an endangered species.The
two definable forces that have led to his alienation are the hegemony
of molecular science and the primacy accorded to the randomized clinical
trial in biomedical research. Both these stifle creative originality
the former by an over dependence on complex and technology-driven "big
science" and a flawed founding philosophy, and the latter by putting
limits on our intellectual expectations and a bureaucratic approach
to scientific research. |
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| Podcast (audio recording) of the talk is available in mp3 format (99.9 Mb). (For more podcasts please click here...) | ||
| 205. | Centre for Contemporary Studies, IISc, Bangalore, & In association with the Sir Ratan Tata Trust Invite you to Production of knowledge in the natural and social sciences: a lecture series April 9, 2011 Venue: Lecture Hall 1, IISER Kolkata Schedule: 10.00 10.30 AM:
10.30 - 11.00 AM Coffee/ Tea 11.00 - 12.30 PM
Raghavendra Gadagkar 12.30 PM Lunch break 2.00 - 3.30 PM Natural Disasters, Social Upheavals and the Laws of Science
Mahatma Gandhi, in the wake of the Bengal earthquake in 1934 made a controversial remark that the disaster was a punishment to Indians for practicing untouchability. Rabindranath Tagore, the Nobel Laureate poet, openly criticized Gandhi for advocating such an unscientific view on the causes of natural events. However, Gandhi never retracted his statement. He saw a necessary law-like connection between the disaster and punishment that called for the moral work of self purification. Interestingly, Gandhi was ready to accept that a defender of untouchability could see a similar connection between the earthquake and Gandhi's fight against untouchability. 1n 1756, Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher published three essays on the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755. Before him, Voltaire and Rousseau wrote essays and poems based on the Lisbon earthquake. All these responses indicate the possibility of viewing natural events as occasions for moral labour. How can we relate nature and morality without regressing to pre-critical metaphysics? What are natural laws if they attend to moral necessity? What are laws of nature? Pursuing these questions may allow us to examine the recent moral and political debates around climate change and other environmental issues. 3.30 - 4.00 PM Coffee/ Tea 4.00 - 5.30 PM
This talk takes off
from my own experiences as a novice in the mental health clinic. It
is shaped by my discomfort with what was happening in the clinic the
narrow localization impulse and the rather simple cause-effect analysis
of the medical perspective, the absent connection with historico-cultural
questions, the pathologization of suffering, the bracketing of distress
in diagnostic categories and the insensitivity of practice. It is necessitated
by the felt need to rethink on my part, a rethinking that is
still incomplete and hence ongoing. However, why
do we need to rethink? What is wrong with existing mental health science
that it needs rethinking? This talk will deploy the context of dreams
to locate lack in the mental health sciences along nine axes (namely
lack in width, depth, imagination, dynamism, plasticity, complexity,
empathy, care as also lack in an attention to detail/particularity
leading
in turn to an impoverished understanding of the human, the human mind
and the matter of the mind)
and then see what one needs to rethink and how one can
go about it. |
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204. |
CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY STUDIES & CENTRE FOR INTERNET AND SOCIETY, Bangalore |
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Invites you to a public lecture on "Biometrics:
Privacy and Trust" Speaker:Dr. Ian Brown |
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Date & Time: Monday 21st March 2011,4.00pm All are cordially invited |
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Abstract:
Trust is hard to build, but easy to lose. What factors affect individuals'
trust in new technologies? How can governments create citizen trust
in biometric security tools? Can biometrics be designed to be privacy-friendly?
And how did these questions lead to the cancellation of the UK's national
identity scheme, after a decade of development costing tens of millions
of pounds? About the speaker: Dr Ian Brown's research is focused on public policy issues around information and the Internet, particularly privacy and copyright. He also works in the more technical fields of communications security and healthcare informatics. |
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| Podcast (audio recording) of the talk is available in mp3 format (111 Mb). (For more podcasts please click here...) | ||
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203. |
CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY STUDIES |
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Invites you to a public lecture on "What
is it to be Human?" Speaker: Date & Time: Wednesday 16th March 2011,4.00pm |
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All are cordially invited |
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Abstract:
In posing this question we could be asking what is distinctive
of the species homo sapiens or what is panhumanly significant--what,
despite all the intra-human diversity that exists, are the most morally
important features that human beings have in common. I shall suggest
that these questions are not as distinct as they may seem. In asking
the first question we typically have a normative agenda in mind and
in asking the second we must appeal to the facts. I want to argue that
the most plausible currently accepted answers among experts to the first
question have a bearing on how we should approach answering the second,
and in particular that much of what is worst and what is best in humans
is distinctively human and that the old idea (ingrained in our European
languages—but how is it in other languages?) that the beasts or
brutes are our moral inferiors or antithesis is a speciesist selfdelusion.
I shall build on the idea that humans are distinctive in being more
‘deeply social’ than other animals and that this explains
both humans’ distinctive capacity for extended moral concern but
also some of the worst things of which humans (and only humans) are
capable. |
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| Podcast (audio recording) of the talk is available in mp3 format (110 Mb). (For more podcasts please click here...) | ||
| 202. | CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY STUDIES URL: http://ces.iisc.ernet.in/hpg/ragh/ccs |
|
Invites you to a public lecture on
"The City As A Laboratory : Exploring the Impact of Engineering
and
All are cordially invited |
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| Abstract:As India urbanizes rapidly, questions
about the emerging social life of our cities become increasingly significant.
The answers for our future may be as much in the past as in the present.
This year, Ahmedabad, the country's seventh-largest city celebrates its
600th anniversary. One of India's longest-lived cities and a site of recurring
mass violence, modern Ahmedabad is fast morphing in response to the needs
of a neo-liberal economy. Amrita Shah draws on her study of the city's
contemporary history to demonstrate how its evolution is, to some extent,
the result of ceaseless engineering and experimentation. About the speaker:Amrita Shah is a journalist, columnist and non fiction writer. Best known for her pioneering series of articles on Mumbai's underworld, she has worked with Time-Life Inc., edited features magazines Debonair and Elle and has been a Columnist and Contributing Editor with The Indian Express. Her publications include Balancing India's Human Resources (co-author), a report for the Economist Intelligence Unit, Hype, Hypocrisy & Television In Urban India (Vikas, New Delhi, 1997), an early study on the impact of the audio-visual medium and Vikram Sarabhai-A Life (Penguin-Viking, New Delhi, 2007), a biography of the eponymous physicist and institution builder. She was recently a visiting scholar at the Institute for Public Knowledge, New York University, and has been awarded fellowships by, among others, the Bangalore-based New India Foundation and the Mumbai-based Homi Bhabha Fellowships Council. |
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| Podcast (audio recording) of the talk is available in mp3 format (67.3 Mb). (For more podcasts please click here...) | ||
| 201. | CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY STUDIES
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| Invites you to a talk on "The Edge of Physics:Crafting a non-fiction narrative that combines hard science with travel writing" Speaker: Anil Ananthaswamy Consultant, New Scientist Magazine. Date & Time: Thursday, 03rd Feb 2011, 4:00 pm. Venue: CCS Seminar Hall, IISc, Bangalore 12 Note: We have shifted to the former JNCASR, near the Health Centre All are cordially invited Tea/Coffee will be served at 3:30 p.m. |
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Abstract:
Anil Ananthaswamy is the author of The Edge of Physics, a popular-science
book that's written as a travelogue to some of the most inaccessible
and extreme places on Earth, from Siberia to the South Pole. Using the
genre of a travelogue, The Edge of Physics tells the story of modern
cosmology. UK's Physics World called it, "The ultimate physics-adventure
travelogue". New Scientist magazine said it is "a remarkable narrative
that combines fundamental physics with high adventure". In this talk, Ananthaswamy will discuss the writing of the book, the challenge of combining two different genres of non-fiction to create a coherent narrative without short-changing either the travel aspect or the science, and the reasons why he chose this format for the book. |
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| Podcast (audio recording) of the talk is available in mp3 format (72.2 Mb). (For more podcasts please click here...) | ||
| 200. | CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY STUDIES Invites you to a public lecture on "The University of
21st Century:Contents and Curricula" |
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Speaker: Yehuda Elkana Date & Time: Thursday, 20th Jan 2011, 4:00 pm |
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Venue: CCS Seminar
Hall,IISc, Bangalore 12 All are cordially invited |
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| Podcast (audio recording) of the talk is available in mp3 format (81.2 Mb). (For more podcasts please click here...) | ||
| 199. | CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY STUDIES Cordially invites you to a |
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"SEMINAR ON HIGHER EDUCATION" Date & Time: Saturday, 15th January 2011 Venue : Centre for Contemporary Studies Seminar Hall |
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Program Schedule: 09:15 a.m - 09:30 a.m. 09:30 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. 10:30 a.m. - 11:00 a.m 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 a.m. 12:00 a.m. - 01:00 p.m 01:00 p.m. - 02:30 p.m. 02:30 p.m. - 03:30 p.m. 03:30 p.m. - 04:00 p.m. 04:00 p.m. - 05:00 p.m. 05:00 p.m. - 06:00 p.m. 06.00 p.m. HIGH TEA |
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| 198. | Centre for Contemporary Studies & the
Integrated Science Initiative, Centre for the Study of Culture & Society. |
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| Presents a talk on 'Einstein, Picasso; The Art of Science and the Science of Art' |
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Speaker: Emeritus Professor of History & Philosophy of Science, University College of London. |
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Date & Time: Friday,
14th Jan 2011, 4:00 pm |
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All are cordially invited |
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Abstract:
Almost simultaneously, in the first decade of the 20th Century
Albert Einstein discovered relativity and Pablo Picasso cubism. How
- and why? This fascinating story involves their turbulent personal
lives; the high drama of their struggles to achieve new ideas in the
face of opposition from contemporaries; and the unlikely sources for
their creative leaps, ignored by everyone else. To fully understand
what happened involves coming to grips with wide-ranging questions such
as: Are there similarities in creativity between artists and scientists?
What do artists and scientists mean by 'aesthetics' and 'beauty' ? Can
we unravel creativity at its highest level?
About the speaker: Arthur I. Miller
is a well known historian and philosopher of science. In his own words,
he has always been attracted by "what is the nature of...."
questions, and this affinity made him shift gears from physics to the
history of science. He is the author of several popular level as well
as academic books, "Deciphering the Cosmic Number: The Strange
Friendship of Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung" being the latest. |
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| Podcast (audio recording) of the talk is available in mp3 format (67.1 Mb). (For more podcasts please click here...) | ||
| 197. | CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY STUDIES Presents a talk on |
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'Scores for Space - A Theatre of Imaginations'
Speaker: Ms. Penelope Wehrli Date & Time: Friday, 13th Jan 2011, 4:00 pm All are cordially invited |
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Abstract:
For the "Scores for Space" I organise actions, images, sounds
and text to independent parallel narrative tracks in space. A polyphony
of contents is thus generated, which can complement and contradict each
other. In this theatre of calculated complexity it becomes necessary
for a member of the audience to become active and "read" the
material and sort it out into his or her own track - "to cut his
own film in his head". As it is not possible to see everything
at once one moves in the fragmented space of imagination. About the speaker: Penelope Wehrli, born in Zurich, Switzerland, lives presently in Berlin,Germany. She has worked on Performance-Installation, Film, Video in New York, Belgrad, Bangalore, TelAviv. Since 2001 she has been working on"Scores for Space", walk-in Multi-Channel-Videoinstallations with Live-Performance. As a scenographer she has collaborated with Johann Kresnik, Jossie Wieler, Dimiter Gottscheff, Robert Schuster, Barbara Frey. She was Professor for Scenography at the University of Arts and Design in Karlsruhe, Germany. |
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| Podcast (audio recording) of the talk is available in mp3 format (35.9 Mb). (For more podcasts please click here...) | ||
| 196. | CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY STUDIES URL: http://ces.iisc.ernet.in/hpg/ragh/ccs Presents a Play Reading |
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| "Jagadamba" A one-woman play on the life of Kasturba Gandhi in two acts set in South Africa (1915) and the Aga Khan Palace in Pune(1942) Original Marathi Version by Dr. Ramdas Bhatkal English Translation by Ms. Yashodhara Deshpande Maitra Rochester, USA |
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Selections from the English translation will be read by Ms. Yashodhara
Deshpande Maitra |
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| Podcast (audio recording) of the talk is available in mp3 format (85.9 Mb). (For more podcasts please click here...) | ||
| 195. | Centre forContemporary Studies & the Integrated
Science Initiative, Centre for the Study of Culture & Society Presents a Talk on: Speaker:
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Date & Time: Tuesday,
4th January 2011, 4.00 p.m. All are cordially invited |
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Abstract:
In this talk, Prof. Akeel Bilgrami will explore the wider significance
of the concept of 'Nature'. He will try and show why the concept should
not merely be the site of an ecological concern, but the site of very
large themes in political conomy, political governance, and quite generally
the mentalities of modern democratic culture. |
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| Podcast (audio recording) of the talk is available in mp3 format (88Mb). (For more podcasts please click here...) | ||
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