(A team of scholars from Bangladesh, India and Nepal are working in this field. The research is related with memory as mnemonic human process. It covers a wide range of topics, including colonial history, human institutions, ethnicity, diaspora, drama, literature of anxiety, fiction, songs, nature, displacement, nationalism, and language. We are going to organize a workshop in India in 2024. We will update you about the event.
The research team of DH organized seminar-workshop in the summer of 2019, in Kathmandu and has multiple follow up workshops in Kathmandu and Chottogram, Bangladesh.
Preamble: The need of information technology in implementing the programs in the Humanities is the primary goal of Ditgital Humanities Divison. Consequently, contemporary research in Nepal requires high levels of communication skills. Representing culture and art on a global platform, participating in the communicative nuances of globalization, comprehending highly competitive commerce and business, and advancing scientific know-how, DH works in the world of new technologies. DH helps motivate students for research on various fields of the Humanities and Social Sciences. DH fulfills our needs in the following four categories: Information, Research, Humanistic Values, and Global Communication with archiving projects.
Access to Information: The use of digital technology in teaching and learning allows instructors and scholars to communicate with one another and share information and knowledge more effectively. Access to information helps learn how to frame knowledge data in formal institutional environment. Information provides both textual and visual data for empirical studies and analysis. Research: DH provides a quick and efficient access to data for study and research. It helps researchers explore, organize and analyze materials or data more quickly and effectively. Humanistic Values: DH promotes the human thought and activities and our programs help understand the role of technology in the Humanities. DHers generally realize that to be human and to be technologically oriented is not separate or self-contradictory. Global Communication with archiving projects: Visual and verbal texts, journals, and social media are all around us and we need to learn how to use them in our academic activities. The goal of DH education is to understand culture through technology and access to the means or methods of communication.
In and Out of the Cultural Spaces: Politics and Aesthetics of Dispora (Comparative Nepali Studies) The research in this field is ongoing.
Chief Coordinator: Khagendra Nepal
Preamble: How do you look into a particular issue from the locations of home and abroad? How do things look different through spatial oscillation? What is an aesthetic perception about Nepal from a distance? What political concepts do we form when our locations are changed? Keeping these questions in mind, we welcome Nepali academics, professionals, artists, businesspersons, and students who are ‘living abroad’ to engage with us on various issues like pedagogy, notions of vernacular and global concerns, urbanism, folk memory, Nepal, and the outside in general. How do our ‘outside’ selves see us? ‘In and Out’ is a traveling metaphor of the speaking subjects who are always on the threshold between home and abroad, in the creative magical dailo between the two worlds that never are distinctly two worlds. We probably never cross the threshold. The traveling metaphor within the threshold is a double bind of moving in and out, in an oscillation of: presence and absence, home and abroad, oceanic journey out and reminiscing mind in. Let us presume that this is a liminal space, which constantly evokes the mind to speak about the space that you have never left by journeying out. The idea of In and Out of the Cultural Spaces: Politics and Aesthetics of Diasporais a Comparative Nepali Studies project that invites you to speak in webinars, help us publish a journal, a series of anthologies, and work on the archives. We will be honored to have you participate. SAFAR and CASSA research team is going to organize the program.
Under the South Asian Shade: Interregional Conversations and Perambulations SAFAR organized Webinars during the Pandemic. The presenters were Prof. Dr. Sangita Rayamajhi, Prof. Dr. Arun Gupto, Dr. Shreyoshi Chettri, Dr. Subhasree Ghosh, Dr. Pallabi Gupta, Dr. Diksha Dhar, Ms. Aparna Awaal Ms. Menuka Gurung, Dr. Barsha Moktan Rayamajhi
The Asian Studies Annual Conference was organized in Kathmanud, Nepal on the theme of Gender, Communication and Development on April 22 and 23, in Kathmandu. There has been a rapid increase in number of women in the workplace as entrepreneurs, managers, bankers, and computer experts but still the ‘glass ceiling’ continues.
Asian Studies III
Asian Studies Conference III was held on March 27–28, 2022, at Marshyandi Hotel Kathmandu in collaboration with CASSA and Ambition College, Kathmandu. Prof. Arun Gupto (Nepal) is working on an anthology with Dr. Lora Gonzales (USA). Interested writers can submit their abstracts by August, 2022 to Prof. Gupto (orungupto@gmail.com).
The conference focused on community studies and environmental studies.
Four Gray Walls and Four Gray Towers: A Documentary on Kathmandu Valley
Urban Studies is one of the major aspects of contemporary research. Urban sociology, planning, and geography are the entities to study cities. Furthermore, from the early twentieth century ideas of human ecology about human social adjustments to the digital age ideas of smart cities, Urban studies has covered a vast areas of study.
Asian Studies Conference II
Asian Studies Conference II on Nature and Environment in Sauraha, Chitwan National Park, Chitwan, Nepal. You can write academic papers, plan performances, and exhibit visuals. Please send your abstracts (500 words) to cassa.arh@gmail.com. Also visit http://cassanepal.org/pages/activities for more information.
Workshop in Digital Humanities
DH is an academic field and a scholarly activity at the intersection of the various computational tools or digital technologies and the various disciplines of Humanities. It both uses and reflects upon the application of the various digital technologies by engaging with old and new critical and crucial questions in Humanities.
Nepali Cultural Studies: Memory and Emotion
The research is about interdisciplinary study of Nepali culture from the points of memory and emotion. The papers are aimed at compiling an anthology on Nepal Studies which is a multidisciplinary research on history, culture, ecology, and politics, four major disciplines of contemporary academic significance to introduce Nepal.
Bangladesh Studies (BD): Memory, Emotion, and Envisioning Nation Research Advisors: Prof. Manzoorul Islam, Prof. Arun Gupto Researchers are welcome to participate on BD. You can contact Students Advisors for further information. The present research is done by a group of writers from Chittagong, Bangladesh.
Comparative South Asian Studies (CSAS)
CSAS is a research venture which tries critique existing South Asian Studies as represented in books and university syllabi. The existing research aims to publish an anthology edited by Arun Gupto, Diksha Dhar, and Pallabi Gupta.
River Stage II: Part of documentary “Four Gray Walls, Four Gray Towers”
Conceptualized by Arun Gupto
River Stage is an InterArt performance, a submission to the rivers in the cities when almost nothing is left but the arts to offer! Abhi Subedi and Leonard Schwartz read “Words, Mirrors, and Words,” a collection from their works! Salil Subedi’s musical composition and performance connects the river with the minds of the poets.
ACTIVITIES
Activities
Memory Studies
(A team of scholars from Bangladesh, India and Nepal are working in this field. The research is related with memory as mnemonic human process. It covers a wide range of topics, including colonial history, human institutions, ethnicity, diaspora, drama, literature of anxiety, fiction, songs, nature, displacement, nationalism, and language. We are going to organize a workshop in India in 2024. We will update you about the event.
Chief Editors
Dr. Shreyashi Nandy Chettri (Abu Dhabi)
Dr. Subharsree Ghosh (Kolkata)
Dr. Diksha Dhar (Hyderabad), Chief Coordinator
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Nepali Art: Spaciality, Texuality, Sexuality
It is an anthology project on Nepali art, which will introduce Nepali art from the point of view of the three notables.
Editors: Prof. Arun Gupto, Dr. Shreyoshi Nandy Chettri, Dr. Pallabi Gupta
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Critical Digital Humanities
DHers:
Ms. Menuka Gurung
Ms. Renuka Khatiwada
Ms. Sangita Sigdel
Mr. Sedu Dhakal
Mr. Shankar Paudel
The research team of DH organized seminar-workshop in the summer of 2019, in Kathmandu and has multiple follow up workshops in Kathmandu and Chottogram, Bangladesh.
Preamble: The need of information technology in implementing the programs in the Humanities is the primary goal of Ditgital Humanities Divison. Consequently, contemporary research in Nepal requires high levels of communication skills. Representing culture and art on a global platform, participating in the communicative nuances of globalization, comprehending highly competitive commerce and business, and advancing scientific know-how, DH works in the world of new technologies. DH helps motivate students for research on various fields of the Humanities and Social Sciences. DH fulfills our needs in the following four categories: Information, Research, Humanistic Values, and Global Communication with archiving projects.
Access to Information: The use of digital technology in teaching and learning allows instructors and scholars to communicate with one another and share information and knowledge more effectively. Access to information helps learn how to frame knowledge data in formal institutional environment. Information provides both textual and visual data for empirical studies and analysis. Research: DH provides a quick and efficient access to data for study and research. It helps researchers explore, organize and analyze materials or data more quickly and effectively. Humanistic Values: DH promotes the human thought and activities and our programs help understand the role of technology in the Humanities. DHers generally realize that to be human and to be technologically oriented is not separate or self-contradictory. Global Communication with archiving projects: Visual and verbal texts, journals, and social media are all around us and we need to learn how to use them in our academic activities. The goal of DH education is to understand culture through technology and access to the means or methods of communication.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
In and Out of the Cultural Spaces: Politics and Aesthetics of Dispora (Comparative Nepali Studies) The research in this field is ongoing.
Chief Coordinator: Khagendra Nepal
Preamble: How do you look into a particular issue from the locations of home and abroad? How do things look different through spatial oscillation? What is an aesthetic perception about Nepal from a distance? What political concepts do we form when our locations are changed? Keeping these questions in mind, we welcome Nepali academics, professionals, artists, businesspersons, and students who are ‘living abroad’ to engage with us on various issues like pedagogy, notions of vernacular and global concerns, urbanism, folk memory, Nepal, and the outside in general. How do our ‘outside’ selves see us? ‘In and Out’ is a traveling metaphor of the speaking subjects who are always on the threshold between home and abroad, in the creative magical dailo between the two worlds that never are distinctly two worlds. We probably never cross the threshold. The traveling metaphor within the threshold is a double bind of moving in and out, in an oscillation of: presence and absence, home and abroad, oceanic journey out and reminiscing mind in. Let us presume that this is a liminal space, which constantly evokes the mind to speak about the space that you have never left by journeying out. The idea of In and Out of the Cultural Spaces: Politics and Aesthetics of Diasporais a Comparative Nepali Studies project that invites you to speak in webinars, help us publish a journal, a series of anthologies, and work on the archives. We will be honored to have you participate. SAFAR and CASSA research team is going to organize the program.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Visual Cultural Studies
Documentaries
Art of the Lake (2014): Concept and Host: Arun Gupto. DOP: Salil Subedi
Art and the City (2022): Concept and Host: Arun Gupto. DOP: Renuka Khatiwada
Anger and the Mahatma (2023): Concept and Host: Arun Gupto. DOP: Renuka Khatiwada
Forbidden Food (forthcoming): Concept and Host: Arun Gupto, DOP: Ms. Renuka
Khatiwada, Research: Ms. Urja Karki, Editor: Pallabi Gupta
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Photography
SAFAR has an archive of thousands of photographs, which can be used by paying copyright fees to the photographer and the Foundation
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Under the South Asian Shade: Interregional Conversations and Perambulations
SAFAR organized Webinars during the Pandemic. The presenters were Prof. Dr. Sangita Rayamajhi, Prof. Dr. Arun Gupto, Dr. Shreyoshi Chettri, Dr. Subhasree Ghosh, Dr. Pallabi Gupta, Dr. Diksha Dhar, Ms. Aparna Awaal Ms. Menuka Gurung, Dr. Barsha Moktan Rayamajhi
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Publications by SAFAR academics
Books by Gupto, Arun
Gupto, Arun. Goddesses of Kathmandu Valley: Grace, Rage, Knowledge. London, Routledge, 2016.
Gupto, Arun. Theory and Criticism: Recent Writings from South Asia (London, Routledge), 2022.
Gupto, Arun. Seasons of the Divine with Photographs by Renuka Khatiwada (forthcoming)
Gupto, Arun & Pallabi Gupta. Rethinking South Asian Studies (forthcoming)
Books by Rayamajhi, Sangita
Co-editor with Kathleen M. Nadeau, Women and Violence: Global Lives in Focus (Women
and Society around the World). ABC CLIO, Nov. 30, 2019.
Co Authored with Arun Gupto, Kapilvastu and Takshila: Conceptualizing the Context. Kathmandu,
2019.
Co-authored with Kathleen M. Nadeau, Women’s Roles in Asia(Women’s Roles through History),
Greenwood Press, 2013. (Hardbound)
Author. Who Is the Daughter of Nepal? Across Publications: Kathmandu, 2001
Documentaries
Gupto, Arun & Salil Subedi. Art of the Lake (2014),
Gupto, Arun, Salil Subedi & Renuka Khatiwada. Art and the City (2022)
Gupto, Arun & Renuka Khatiwada Anger and the Mahatma (2023).
Individual Research
Dhakal, Sedu. Border Studies
Gurung, Menuka.
Paudel, Shankar: Ethnic Environmental Discourse
Karki, Urja. Fobidden Food
Khatiwada, Renuka: Community as Women in the Street
Nepal, Khagendra: Literature and the Village Imagination
Maharjan, Prakash & Sangita Sigdel: Witness and Memory in Legal Proceedings
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Asian Studies IV
The Asian Studies Annual Conference was organized in Kathmanud, Nepal on the theme of Gender, Communication and Development on April 22 and 23, in Kathmandu. There has been a rapid increase in number of women in the workplace as entrepreneurs, managers, bankers, and computer experts but still the ‘glass ceiling’ continues.
Asian Studies III
Asian Studies Conference III was held on March 27–28, 2022, at Marshyandi Hotel Kathmandu in collaboration with CASSA and Ambition College, Kathmandu. Prof. Arun Gupto (Nepal) is working on an anthology with Dr. Lora Gonzales (USA). Interested writers can submit their abstracts by August, 2022 to Prof. Gupto (orungupto@gmail.com).
The conference focused on community studies and environmental studies.
Four Gray Walls and Four Gray Towers: A Documentary on Kathmandu Valley
Urban Studies is one of the major aspects of contemporary research. Urban sociology, planning, and geography are the entities to study cities. Furthermore, from the early twentieth century ideas of human ecology about human social adjustments to the digital age ideas of smart cities, Urban studies has covered a vast areas of study.
Asian Studies Conference II
Asian Studies Conference II on Nature and Environment in Sauraha, Chitwan National Park, Chitwan, Nepal. You can write academic papers, plan performances, and exhibit visuals. Please send your abstracts (500 words) to cassa.arh@gmail.com. Also visit http://cassanepal.org/pages/activities for more information.
Workshop in Digital Humanities
DH is an academic field and a scholarly activity at the intersection of the various computational tools or digital technologies and the various disciplines of Humanities. It both uses and reflects upon the application of the various digital technologies by engaging with old and new critical and crucial questions in Humanities.
Nepali Cultural Studies: Memory and Emotion
The research is about interdisciplinary study of Nepali culture from the points of memory and emotion. The papers are aimed at compiling an anthology on Nepal Studies which is a multidisciplinary research on history, culture, ecology, and politics, four major disciplines of contemporary academic significance to introduce Nepal.
Bangladesh Studies (BD): Memory, Emotion, and Envisioning Nation
Research Advisors: Prof. Manzoorul Islam, Prof. Arun Gupto
Researchers are welcome to participate on BD. You can contact Students Advisors for further information. The present research is done by a group of writers from Chittagong, Bangladesh.
Comparative South Asian Studies (CSAS)
CSAS is a research venture which tries critique existing South Asian Studies as represented in books and university syllabi. The existing research aims to publish an anthology edited by Arun Gupto, Diksha Dhar, and Pallabi Gupta.
River Stage II: Part of documentary “Four Gray Walls, Four Gray Towers”
Conceptualized by Arun Gupto
River Stage is an InterArt performance, a submission to the rivers in the cities when almost nothing is left but the arts to offer! Abhi Subedi and Leonard Schwartz read “Words, Mirrors, and Words,” a collection from their works! Salil Subedi’s musical composition and performance connects the river with the minds of the poets.