The “Critical” in Critical Caste Studies: Possibilities and Challenges

The relatively recent rise of Critical Caste Studies has taken academia by storm. In 2021, Gajendra Ayyathurai wrote “the global academy needs a new interdisciplinary field, Critical Caste Studies, to rethink caste-power in civil society, state, and academy in India and overseas.” As an extension of last year’s seminar by the same name, this seminar asks what is critical about Critical Caste Studies. How does it depart from other fields like Dalit Studies, Subaltern Studies, Postcolonial/Decolonial Studies? Laura Breuk suggests that “Critical Caste Studies is “critical” precisely because, no matter what discipline it may be situated in (history, anthropology, gender studies, literary studies, etc.), it poses an explicit challenge, a committed and informed refusal of the biases of dominant histories, literary canon formations, linguistic hegemonies, archival biases, and cultural erasures.” Participants are encouraged to submit proposals that seek to engage with this challenge, asking questions that include but are not limited to:

How does Critical Caste Studies help place different disciplines in conversation?
What are some ways in which the rise of this new interdisciplinary field or theoretical frame can be detrimental to scholarship on caste that has been going on for decades now?
What are some ways in which Critical Caste Studies expands the scope of Dalit Studies?
How does Caste, as a local phenomena, translate into a larger global lexicon that can help frame different disciplinary questions?
What are some limitations of translating anti-caste work or work on caste in the global context?
 How does Critical Caste Studies renew the relationship between caste, gender and, sexuality?
Are there advantages and disadvantages to provincializing Caste by choosing the local over the global?
Does Critical Caste Studies offer a fundamental provocation to out approach to the Humanities or the Arts?

 Please submit an abstract of 250-300 words. If you have any queries, please reach out to [email protected]