Workshop 2: Making Britain - South Asian Visions of Home and Abroad
Dear HumanDHS network friends
Please find below information on a workshop looking at the Asian contribution to Britian.
Kind regards
Brian Ward
Making Britain: South Asian Visions of Home and Abroad, 1870–1950
Making Britain is a 3-year AHRC-funded project that examines South Asian contributions to Britain’s literary, cultural and political life in the period 1870–1950. Complicating the common perception that a homogeneous British culture only began to diversify after the Second World War, the project explores how an early diasporic population impacted on British life and helped to form contemporary Britain’s cultural-political identities. An interdisciplinary approach will illuminate the diverse ways in which South Asian writers, artists, activists and professionals in Britain formed affiliations, groupings and solidarities to create a dynamic ‘contact zone’ at the heart of empire.
Workshop 2: ‘Investigating Asian Bloomsbury’
Saturday 5 July 2008
9.30am to 5.00pm
St John’s College Research Centre, St Giles, Oxford
This one-day workshop seeks to redefine Bloomsbury, central London, as a site of cross-cultural interaction and exchange in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Locating South Asian editors, writers, activists and soldiers at the core of London, it will explore the varied ways in which these early migrants negotiated and reshaped this iconic space. The workshop will open with a keynote paper by Kristin Bluemel (Monmouth University, NJ) on Mulk Raj Anand and ‘intermodernism’. This will be followed by a range of papers on literary figures and movements, publishing ventures and political activism, and a panel on the First World War as an ‘Indian war’.
Making Britain is led by Professor Susheila Nasta (Open University), in collaboration with Professor Elleke Boehmer (University of Oxford) and Dr Ruvani Ranasinha (King’s College London), and Research Assistants Dr Sumita Mukherjee (Oxford) and Dr Rehana Ahmed (Open). We are working in partnership with the British Library and SALIDAA, and in consultation with leading scholars Dr Rozina Visram, Professor Partha Mitter, Professor Lyn Innes and Dr Deborah Swallow.
For any queries, please email: arts-making-britain[@]open.ac.uk
Or visit our website: www.open.ac.uk/arts/south-asians-making-britain
For directions to St John’s College Research Centre, please see the map on our website.
*As places are limited, please register your interest in attending this workshop a.s.a.p.
We wish to acknowledge the kind support of St John’s College, and Professors Linda
McDowell and Ritchie Robertson in particular, in hosting this workshop.
Provisional Programme
Making Britain Workshop 2: ‘Investigating Asian Bloomsbury’
Saturday 5 July 2008, 9.30am to 5.00pm; St John’s College Research Centre, St Giles, Oxford
9.30: Arrival and registration
9.45–11.00: Keynote
Kristin Bluemel (Monmouth University, NJ), ‘Intermodernism and Mulk Raj Anand: No Apology for Heroism’
11.00–11.30: Tea/coffee
11.30–1.00: Panel: ‘Bloomsbury Encounters’
Anna Snaith (King’s College London), ‘Conversations in Bloomsbury: Mulk Raj Anand and the Hogarth Press’
Ruvani Ranasinha (King’s College London), ‘Indian Writing Magazine and Poetry London: Politics and Publishing in Asian Bloomsbury’
Susheila Nasta (Open University), ‘Other Conversations in Bloomsbury’
Respondent: Emma Bainbridge (University of Kent)
1.00–2.00: Lunch
2.00–3.15: Panel: ‘An Indian War’
Santanu Das (Queen Mary, University of London), ‘Sepoys and Sahibs: India, Empire and First World War Writing’
Gerard McCann (University of Cambridge), ‘The Great Tamasha: Izzat, “Martial Races” and the Western Front’
Respondent: Prabhjot Parmar (Royal Holloway, University of London)
3.15–3.30: Tea/coffee
3.30–5.00: Panel: ‘The Contours of Asian Bloomsbury’
Elleke Boehmer (University of Oxford), ‘The “Zig-Zag” Eastern Line of Early Bloomsbury’
Rehana Ahmed (Open University), ‘On the Periphery of Asian Bloomsbury: Krishna Menon and Working-Class South Asians in London’
Sumita Mukherjee (University of Oxford), ‘Politics of Dress: The “Gorgeous Colours” of “Native Costumes”’
Respondent: Shafquat Towheed (Open University)
______________________________________________________________________________
Registration
Name: _______________________________
Address: ____________________________________________
____________________________________________
Email address: ________________________
Would you like to join the ‘Making Britain’ mailing list?
Full day fee including lunch £15 Concessions (students/unwaged) £7.50
Please give details of any special dietary requirements ______________________
If you require access to disabled facilities, please let us know
Please send a cheque made payable to ‘The Open University’ to:
Heather Scott, Project Co-ordinator ‘Making Britain’, The Ferguson Centre, Faculty of Arts, Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA.
Tel no.: 01908 655244
Payment should arrive before Saturday 14 June 2008.