HCIAS Colloquium Rethinking regions: cultural formations and circulation through and across cultural boundaries

  • Wednesday, 5. November 2025, 16:00 - 17:30
  • Seminar room 215, 2 .OG | Bergheimer Str. 20
    • Philipp Zehmisch, South Asia Institute SAI, Heidelberg University

Part of the lecture series: HCIAS Colloquium: Dialogues across world regions.

The intellectual formation of “area studies” has been subject to significant critique in the early twenty-first century; at the same time, intellectual work continues to be grounded in particular regions and understandings of regions. This is a necessary feature of historically-tuned, highly contextualized work which is usually intertwined with locally embedded research questions. Such a tension is not, therefore, to be dismissed easily. At the same time, we know that the cultural formations are intimately linked to a broad range of cultural practices across a wide geographic range. Furthermore, while the vernacular has been examined in recent scholarly literature in relation to the cosmopolitan, we are only beginning to study the relation between the vernacular, which may be both understood in linguistic terms and as a locally rooted dimension of everyday life, and the regional as well as the cross- or trans-regional. Can we effectively combine attention to regional particularity with a concern for broader historical connections and cultural formations? In which ways could a trans-regional reading enhance our understanding of specific regions, adding complexity to how we understand the local and particular? How can we usefully investigate the impact of cross-regional circulation on the making of the vernacular, in order to enhance our understanding of how boundaries of language, “tradition”, place, and belonging are both maintained and crossed? 

This lecture is based on the Special Issue “Rethinking Regions: Locality and Circulation in South Asia” (co-edited with Anne-Murphy, University of British Columbia, in Asian Ethnology 83-1, 2024) that seeks to engage with the idea of “region” and its continuing relevance from a South Asian perspective. 

HCIAS Colloquium 25-26
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    Seminar room 215, 2. OG | The Research Center for Environmental Economics

    Bergheimer Str. 20, 69117 Heidelberg

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All Dates of the Event 'HCIAS Colloquium. Dialogues Across World Regions Winter Term 25-26'