Summer and Winter Research Programs

 

Current Projects 2019-2020

Project title: Epigraphy and the Indian Epics

South and Southeast Asia contain an enormous number of inscriptions in Sanskrit and other languages. Many of these inscriptions have been published in collections such as Epigraphia Indica, Epigraphia Carnatica, and similar series, which represent an immense resource for exploring the regions' cultures and histories. The successful applicant for this scholarship will use these resources to map the ways in which characters and themes from the two great Indian epics, the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa, were deployed in these inscriptions. The data from this survey will help to determine the thematic, temporal and geographic scope of the popularising of the epics. The scholar will OCR the many volumes of inscriptions (available in most cases in existing digital scans), search for relevant terms, and then tabulate and map the data. If time is sufficient, an associated written project will also be developed.

This scholarship is open to students who have a background in the study of Indian culture and history. Some knowledge of Sanskrit is preferable.

For further info contact Dr Adam Bowles

 

Project title: Film and Non-violent Resistance

The aim of this project is to investigate the contribution of philosophical films to understanding a range of ways in which authoritarian and totalitarian states can be resisted: through protest and amelioration of conditions, through legal contestation, such as plebiscites and strikes, through exile, and through truth-speaking. Each of the means used to resist are non-violent and the project explores the possibilities of non-violent resistance as they are articulated through film. The textual sources used for the project will include discussions of the films, film-philosophy and philosophical theorising about resistance to totalitarianism, such as the work of Hannah Arendt, Howard Caygill, Drew Dalton, and Todd May on resistance. This project will advance thought in political philosophy and film-philosophy through considering the unique contribution of cinema to understanding non-violent resistance, by focusing on the philosophical accounts that film, crossing genres between documentary and dramatic film, and across time and different regimes, such as the apartheid regime in South Africa, the German Democratic Republic, the Chilean Civic-Military Dictatorship and contemporary Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Indonesia can provide. Students working on the project can choose the films to work on in consultation.

This project is open to students with a background in philosophy, and could also be suitable for students with a background in film studies. Ideally the student will be in Year 2 or 3 of their degree.

For further info contact Associate Professor Marguerite La Caze