[phd logs, 3] last week of sem & south asia's publics @ SU
a symposium, conversations, classes, teaching
It feels like ever since I started 'phd logs' series, I have been mainly writing posts under it. But as the semester wind downs, everything (hours, thoughts, energy) is taken up by the work I do for school. This is a recap of my last week of semester 2 – unbelievable to think that the first year of my PhD is coming to an end. Friendly reminder that my reflections are biased & geared towards my experiences – emotional, mental, intellectual. Which means, rather than giving a strictly factual account of the symposium, I am weaving in my views and responses :)
The Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs at Maxwell hosted its 2-day South Asia's Publics symposium on April 24 and 25, 2026 (Friday & Saturday). This took place in the midst of Syracuse University cutting 93 majors, and giving voluntary retirement to 175 faculty members. This was also the last event funded by NRC. Faculty from Upstate NY, and from across the US, visited SU to deliver talks and participate in discussions – brilliant ones. I served as a Graduate Discussant for the 'Governing Publics' panel on Day 2.
I was quite nervous about it. When we had the Graduate Discussant meeting the week of the symposium, I realized that I was the only one who was not doing a PhD in anything related to South Asia/India/adjacent matters. Although I am in my first year and I am not supposed to have an elevator pitch of my research, I felt quite inadequate (I shouldn't!) stating my tentative game studies trajectory. I did speak to some very kind professors in my department who told me comforting, and true, things about academic conferences, my progress, and participations – which really helped.
The week of the conference was a whirlwind. It was also my last week of the semester, so the emotions were already running high. The added academic (et al) tasks (which I have written about here) made the week physically and mentally challenging. And knowing that I will be seeing Yashica Dutt and Aniket Aga (among others) at the Symposium kept my jitters alive. Jitters is a good word. Anxiety and excitement. Two sides of the same coin.
Tuesday was my last 'Critical Approaches to AI' class. In the morning, I attended a talk/conversation between a professor and our new Chair of the department, which was...interesting to say the least. But the highlight is that I met Dr. Hanson (my most-likely-almost-100%-sure future advisor). Interactions with him brighten up my day. I am going to be his Teaching Assistant again next semester, and we spoke a bit about AI in games, the conference, and how I should touch base with him. Something I have been procrastinating on.
For my AI class, we had to present our final projects and our progress. Very late into the course I realized that I am an English major (the course is in the Communication and Rhetorics department), and that I should/can make my course somewhat literary.
The professor got us beers and ciders, and I presented on my paper ideation progress: I will be looking into how AI RPG 'game' platforms are ruining what a game experience is supposed to do/be. I am studying the site AI Dungeon, and have requested for an email interview (which, as of now, they've kindly agreed to!), and write about the various definitions of game/s and ergodic literature; all demand some overlapping things: limitations, quantifiable outcomes, risk, feedback loop. Then, I want to see how the AI hellscape is changing this and what it means for the development and trajectory of game experiences – and whether AI driven RPG experiences can be called games at all.
There were some intense conversations at the symposium. My favorite panel was 'Capitalism and (un)making Publics'. There is a space that exists in the midst of complicity in capitalism and not being able to exist without the structure it manufactures. The first panelist mentioned a line from a Telangana group, 'to labor for ourselves', and while it is a linguistic change, it complicates the relationships between objects and the network they exist within, and most importantly, our place within it. Language is the creation of intuition.
The second talk on purification and commodification talked about inside/outside, about socially sanctified and purified spaces, and the ideology it produces within a purified culture of oppression. Purification is a great word: caste is contingent on who will pollute and who will be polluted. The panelist, Llerena Searle, brought up something incredibly exciting (for me, given my interest in homes and home dynamics): what the layout of a home does to the dynamics of how it is being tended to. How is the construction of walls and rooms and pathways constructed in a way that takes into consideration the work of purity, home labor, and people crossing each other's paths. It is a 'fully contained society' of purification. And they are neither private or public.
I was increasingly worrying about the 40~ ungraded papers sitting in my to-do list by mid-week, but I had pages to write. For Ethan's class, Mnemonics, we had a peer review session: we had to bring a few pages of draft for this. For their class, I am doing a rather intense and ambitious writing project; but not just that: I am also writing something that is in itself intense and hard. About The God of Small Things and my dad. So Wednesday & Thursday were some days of writing while having to pause every 2~ paragraphs to catch my emotional breath.
In Ethan's class this week, it was my turn to be 'praised'. They had bought us coffee and some baked goods for this class. A 'praise' is where everyone else in the class tell you what they admire about you/why they appreciate you/why you're awesome. I was so touched & warmed! I was told things I'd never noticed/thought of/remembered.
About my writing, they said they cite me in other classes, and that it moves them. About my fashion sense and style. About me being funny. About how my friend is protective over me. About how I keep going on side-quests in my life. About how I notice other people and observe. About how I say what I think, and how it is comforting. About how they have a friend crush on me. About how the first thing my cohort thought of to say when they saw me is "they're too cool for us." And much else I am probably forgetting now.
At the end I said, "as my keychain says, if i wasn't on mood stabilizers i'd shed a tear."
In my mind, it will be a disservice to Aniket Aga to try and summarize his arguments, comments, and thought processes. He said that electoral dubiousness is not new but its mode is new, given democracy is an architecture of power – there are now proxys for accountability. Democratic public is always a construction and commitment to no public is total. While intercaste marriages account for 5% of all marriages in India, it still is one of the main (/only) ways of undoing caste. There is another undoing here: someone against the institution of marriage will have to re-politicize and take into consideration the hierarchy of power and social structures.
Aga said that we need a better sense of what we've lost and are losing. I especially want to delve deeper into Spivak's thoughts on how giving up on some freedom is rearrangement of desire – we need an in-between scale, too. "Author is dead but hopefully the speaker is not."
Yashica Dutt's talk was interesting, engaging, and provocative (to me). Disgust and contamination (which directly links to the purification culture) is a habituated behavior. It is a manufactured disgust. She said, "shame that was never ours to begin with." There is a phobia of being easily disgusted, and "just because a reaction seems innate doesn't mean that it is."
It took a lot of prepping myself up, but I had a question and I asked her. Sarukkai and Guru talk about how untouchability is outsourced by touchables. Untouchable is a word with no red underline under it, where as touchable isn't a word. It has a red underline under it. It isn't recognized as a word, thus, not as a thing. No contact is a positive for Brahmins but a negative for Dalits, whereas it is the Brahmins who are afraid of contact and contamination. It is a form of sustenance for them. "Not wanting to be touched" becomes "refusing to touch" – and while it is a linguistically critical thin, how do we go about changing the language in writing without erasing oppressive histories and active struggles? Should we even do that? And if not, how do we address the change that needs to happen? How do we not continue to root this disgust in language? While binary is needed for legibility, it also provides force to the cruelty of this binary.
After Thursday classes I had a few huge boulder-sized overwhelming thoughts in my head: grading 40 papers. symposium starts tomorrow. i have my last two TA teaching classes of sem tomorrow. my teaching will be observed by professor tomorrow. i need to prepare; for everything. i need to grade and comment. I texted a bunch of my friends about how it felt impossible to get through the next three days.
But I did it – I attended the first day of the symposium, I hosted and socialized. And I finished grading the papers Saturday morning, sent the breakdowns at 7a, and was at the symposium at 8.30a.
I wouldn't recommend waking up at 6a after only 3 hours of sleep, then doing stuff and fulfilling commitments till the hour you fall asleep. But hey, I love what I do, I did not realize how much stress I was putting on myself (it caught up later).
My last teaching classes of this semester. I did not want to let go of my first section – they were amazing. So good. I spent the last 10-15 minutes of the class talking to my students about their semester and their experiences, about our classes, and reminding them how everything is political. I didn't see their responses coming: that they are glad that I addressed the political comments. that I handled sensitive conversations very well. that I also handled politically offensive comments, and its responses, well. that I made them think about media in ways they'd had to sit with. and that they want to take my next TA class because of how much they liked working with me.
Teaching is so beautiful :)
