Smriti Srinivas (University of California, Davis), “Ecologies of life and fellowship in Indian Ocean Worlds” (South Asian Studies Council)

Smriti Srinivas’ talk grows out of her work on the valency of “utopia” as a concept for socio-cultural and historical analysis as well as her recent co-edited “Reimagining Indian Ocean Worlds” (2020) that examines contemporary Indian Ocean worlds. It breaks new ground by reconfiguring the Indian Ocean as a space for conceptual and theoretical relationality based on social science and humanities scholarship, thus moving away from an area-based and geographical approach. Professor Srinivas’ research interests include cities and urban cultures, religion, the body, South Asia within a comparative context, and Indian Ocean worlds.