Subjects in Motion
Subjects in Motion: An Interdisciplinary Reenvisioning of Mobility in the Global South is a scholarly institute hosted by the Bucknell Humanities Center and organized by the Mithila Studies Network, taking place 7–9 July 2026 at Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.
The Institute proposes mobility as a transformative analytical framework for humanistic inquiry, one that cuts across disciplinary boundaries and challenges the territorial, identitarian, and statist assumptions that have shaped the study of understudied regions of the Global South. Its focus is Mithila, a transregional cultural zone straddling eastern India and the southeastern Terai of Nepal, whose historically porous borders and layered postcolonial memory make it an especially productive site for this reorientation. By centering movement rather than fixity, the Institute opens new lines of inquiry into how memory, cultural transmission, social relations, and archival practice are constituted through mobility, and how the study of such regions can enrich broader humanistic understanding of human experience.
Bringing together scholars from across the humanities and humanistic social sciences, the Institute advances a critical, collaborative reimagining of Mithila Studies as a field. It contributes to ongoing conversations in Mobility Studies, postcolonial theory, and area studies by demonstrating the methodological possibilities that emerge when regional inquiry is freed from the constraints of national and sub-national frameworks.