Mahatma Gandhi Center for Global Nonviolence (Lecture in the History and Philosophy of Hinduism) and College of Arts and Letters (Visiting Scholars Program) at James Madison University will host a visit by Barbara A. Holdrege, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Chair of the South Asian Studies Committee, and Director of the Center for the Analysis of Sacred Space at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Professor Holdrege will give a public lecture entitled “South Asia and the Middle East: Connecting Cultures Outside of and in Spite of the West” (see abstract below).
The lecture will be held at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, October 23, 2007 in CI/ISAT 159 at James Madison University.
Admission: Free and open to all
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Lecture Abstract:
South Asia and the Middle East: Connecting Cultures Outside of and in Spite of the West, by Barbara A. Holdrege
Wilhelm Halbfass, in his landmark study India and Europe, explores the history of intellectual encounters between India and Europe from classical antiquity to the twentieth century. He concludes with a discussion of the “global predicament of Westernization” in the contemporary period, reflecting more specifically on the problems that the so called “Europeanization of the earth” presents for both European and Indian partners in the “dialogue.” The lecture will explore the critical necessity of going beyond the European horizon of such dialogue and undertaking an alternative form of cross-cultural encounter that does not privilege Europe as a principal partner but rather investigates instead India’s connections with other cultures whose distinctive histories have unfolded outside of, inside of, and in spite of the West. This type of comparative enterprise shifts the focus from India and Europe to South Asia and the Middle East and explores the ongoing economic, political, social, cultural, and religious connections that linked these two regions long before the “rise of the West.” The lecture will consider the role of comparative study in critically interrogating two related sets of paradigms that have assumed the status of dominant discourses in the human sciences in Europe and North America since the nineteenth century: the Eurocentric paradigms that have dominated scholarship in the social sciences and humanities; and the Protestant Christian paradigms that have dominated scholarship in religious studies more specifically. One of the important tasks of comparative study in this context is to challenge scholars to become more critically self conscious of the legacy of these dominant paradigms that lingers in our categories and taxonomies and to reconfigure our scholarly discourses to include a multiplicity of epistemic perspectives. The lecture will suggest two comparative projects that can contribute to dismantling the dominant paradigms. First, comparative studies of South Asia and the Middle East can provide the basis for developing alternative epistemologies to the Eurocentric paradigms that have dominated scholarship in the human sciences. Second, comparative studies of Hindu and Jewish traditions — religious traditions rooted in South Asia and the Middle East, respectively — can provide the basis for developing alternative epistemologies to the Protestant-based paradigms that have dominated the academic study of religion.
