British soldier on horse with flag: Kalighat pat from the Niranjan Niyogi Family Collection, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
The 6th Symposium in the ‘Literary Activism’ series: ‘Decolonisation’. Schedule for 20th and 21st March 2021
Hosted by Ashoka University, in partnership with TORCH, Oxford University, the India Oxford Initiative, and the India International Centre
Go to mission statement here.
20th March
Opening remarks: 4.45 pm Indian standard time.
Aditya Chakrabortty: ‘Before I was Asian I was Black: personal reflections on this moment in anti-racist politics’, 5 to 6 pm
Amit Chaudhuri: ‘Decolonisation as Literary Activism’, 6.15 to 7.15 pm
Debashree Mukherjee: ‘Cinema and its Others: Decolonizing the Human’, 7.30 to 8.30 pm
You can join the webinar here on the 20th: https://zoom.us/j/99416803696
21st March
Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, Rohini Godbole, Ram Ramaswamy, and Somak Raychaudhury in conversation with Subir Sarkar, ‘Decolonising Science?’, 5 to 6.30 pm IST
Francesca Orsini: ‘Decolonising World Literature’, 6.45 to 7.45 pm
Aamer Hussein: ‘On not teaching Han Suyin: and other “third world” matters’, 8 to 9 pm.
Jon Cook: Closing remarks, 9 to 9.20 pm.
You can join the webinar here on the 21st: https://zoom.us/j/95917374229
Notes on the speakers:
Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, a physicist, is Director of the TCG Centres of Research & Education in Science and Technology (CREST) and C V Raman Professor at Ashoka University; he was formerly Director of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai.
Aditya Chakrabortty is columnist and senior economics commentator for the Guardian.
Amit Chaudhuri is a writer and musician. He conceptualises and organises the ‘literary activism’ symposia. He teaches at Ashoka University and the University of East Anglia.
Jon Cook is a critic and biographer, and Emeritus Professor of English at the University of East Anglia.
Rohini Godbole is emeritus Professor at the Centre for High Energy Physics, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore; she was the founding chair of the `Women in Science’ panel of the Indian Academy of Sciences.
Aamer Hussein is a short story writer, novelist, critic, and translator. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Debashree Mukherjee is a film historian and media theorist. Trained as a filmmaker, she worked in Bombay’s film and television industries from 2004-2007 on projects such as the film Omkara. Debashree is Assistant Professor at the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS) at Columbia University, New York and is author of Bombay Hustle: Making Movies in a Colonial City (2020).
Francesca Orsini is a literary historian and Professor of Hindi and South Asian Literature at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Her books include The Hindi Public Sphere and Print and Pleasure.
Ram Ramaswamy is at IIT Delhi, having taught earlier in the School of Physical Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University; he has been President of the Indian Academy of Sciences 2016-18, and Vice Chancellor of the University of Hyderabad 2011-15.
Somak Raychaudhury is presently Director of the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune; he was previously Dean of the Faculty of Physical & Mathematical Sciences at Presidency University, Kolkata.
Subir Sarkar is Professor of Theoretical Physics at Oxford University and a member of the India-Oxford Initiative board; he has worked in science education & communication for the non-Governmental organisation ‘Eklavya’ in Bhopal.
