AIIS dissertation to book workshop in October 2011 - Register Soon!

Workshop: Transforming your dissertation into a book
Sponsored by the American Institute of Indian Studies
Madison, Oct. 19-20, 2011

Sponsored by the several organizations devoted to the study of South Asia, this workshop aims to help a select number of recent PhDs re-vision their doctoral dissertations as books. Applications to participate are due by June 15, 2011, emailed to Susan S. Wadley, sswadley@syr.edu. Participants must arrange their own transport and stays to Madison, Wisconsin for the Annual Conference on South Asia in October. The workshop will begin at 7:30 pm Wednesday evening, Oct. 19 , and all participants are expected to be present at this time.

For selection: Required is an email containing a current cv; the dissertation abstract, its table of contents, and its first chapter plus a not more than 5 page "book proposal" , as if you were submitting to a press (a three- to six-page description of the project, including its purpose, potential audience, scope, contribution to scholarship, and relations to existing literature, including a vision of the book as different from the dissertation). Email to sswadley@syr.edu by midnight on June 15, 2011.

Susan S. Wadley (Anthropology, Syracuse), Convener, plus other more 'senior' scholars will be present in each concurrent session. Their role is to read the materials prior to the meeting and be prepared to intervene and comment, "in the background" primarily, though with key interventions as needed.



Organization:
Wednesday evening: 7-9 Introductions plus discussion by one or two recent successful authors of the transformation process.
Thursday morning is divided into half-hour segments for discussion of each project. For each half-hour session, one participant will have been assigned to make a 5 minute presentation of someone else's project--preferably how that individual would revise the dissertation, and the key themes to be emphasized. During the remaining 25 minutes of that session, all of the other participants join in discussing the project -- except the project's author, who is not allowed to speak. The author of the project under discussion can only listen, take notes, even record, how their project is being understood, mis-understood, stretched, queried, and critiqued by knowledgeable peers with closely related interests, but working in varying theoretical perspectives, disciplines, time periods, etc.
On Thursday afternoon/evening, each participant is given an (approx.) 40 minute time slot to respond to the more important queries, issues, and suggestions raised in the morning, and, most important, to seek feedback or further discussion of areas of their projects with which they recognize they are having difficulty.
We may take an hour break for dinner Thursday evening before continuing the final discussions after dinner.
Conversations can carry over into Friday and Saturday at the South Asia Conference!
Contact:
Susan S. Wadley
Ford Maxwell Professor of South Asian Studies, Maxwell School
Professor of Anthropology
Office: 327 Eggers, Syracuse University, Syracuse NY 13244
Mailing address:
Anthroplogy, 209 Maxwell
Syracuse University
Syracuse NY 13244
Phone: 315-443-4198 (email is way better than phone to reach me)