UO Center for Asian and Pacific Studies given the honor to host the annual South Asia Conference for the Pacific Northwest (SACPAN) at the White Stag Block in Portland, OR

PORTLAND, Ore. – The UO Center for Asian and Pacific Studies will host the annual South Asia Conference for the Pacific Northwest at the White Stag Block in Portland, OR. SACPAN’s beginnings date back to 1966 at the University of Washington. Since then the conference has taken on many different formats and recently brought in University of British Columbia (UBC) to share the hosting.  This will be the first year that the honor has been given to the University of Oregon.

The SACPAN 2016 conference organizer is Lamia Karim, associate professor of Anthropology at the University of Oregon, and the conference is being hosted with the generous support of the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies (CAPS).

Following the success of prior SACPAN events, representatives from thirteen institutions and organizations in the Pacific Northwest, including graduate students and faculty at the University of Oregon, will give presentations covering a wide variety of topics related to South Asia. Topics are grouped thematically into seven panels, which will present throughout the day on Saturday, February 6th beginning at 8:30am. The panel themes related to South Asia are Religion and Education, Technology and Politics, Gender, Politics and History, Media Language & Literature, Economics and Development, and Cinema. Two of the seven panels have been organized by UO professors, Sangita Gopal of Film Studies/English, and Bish Sen of Journalism and Communication.

The conference’s keynote speaker, Dr. Ali Riaz, professor and chair of the Department of Politics and Government at the Illinois State University, will give a lecture titled "The Age of Intolerance in South Asia: Contextualizing Extremism in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.” This keynote lecture is presented by the Jeremiah Lecture Series, funded by UO alumnus Admiral David E. Jeremiah and Mrs. Connie Jeremiah and cosponsored by several departments and centers on campus. The lecture series was established to provide the university and local communities access to experts on Asia and the Pacific.

SACPAN is moving UO Asian Studies into a global network of schools in the Pacific northwest. Within this framework, UO hopes to continue hosting the conference in rotation with UBC and UW. The primary goal of SACPAN is to help build a solid network of regional faculty and students working on South Asia.

We would like to give special thanks to our cosponsors: the White Stag UO-Portland Campus, and the Office of Equity and Inclusion, Asian Studies Program, and Office of International Affairs at the University of Oregon. In addition, we want to offer heartfelt acknowledgement to our colleagues at UBC and UW for working diligently to make each SACPAN ever more successful.

About the University of Oregon
The University of Oregon is a world-class teaching and research institution and Oregon's flagship public university. The UO is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU), an organization made up of the 62 leading public and private research institutions in the United States and Canada. The University of Oregon is one of only two AAU members in the Pacific Northwest.

Contact: Jonathon Campbell, Center for Asian and Pacific Studies, 541-346-5068, jwcamp@uoregon.edu

Center for Asian and Pacific Studies