30 June 2017
'South Asia Series' talks from August to December 2017
The ‘South Asia Series’ of talks recommences in August, with a diverse line-up of speakers, based on the British Library's ‘Two Centuries of Indian Print’ Project and the South Asia Collection. The talks, on topics ranging from the 16th-century founder of the Mughal Empire, to Indian theatre and Shakespeare in South India, will be followed by discussions facilitated by BL curators and other specialists in the field. The presentations, which will take place at the Foyle Learning Centre at the British Library, between 5.30-7.00pm, will include the following:
On 21st August 2017, Professor of Art History at the University of Texas at Austin, Michael Charlesworth will talk about the works of Reginald Farrer (1880-1920), who was an alpine plant collector, gardener, and the garden writer who single-handedly changed the way the anglophone world writes about garden plants. The talk entitled “From Sri Lanka to the Western Front: Reginald Farrer's Buddhism” will trace the energy of Buddhist thought in varied works by Farrer, particularly in his account of temples and ruined cities.
Front cover of ‘In Old Ceylon’ (1908). British Library, 010058.f.9
Dr. Thea Buckley examines the curious case of how Pericles, Shakespeare’s tale of a seafaring prince and a princess abducted by pirates, circulated to South India’s Malabar Coast. In her talk in September, ‘In the spicèd Indian air’: the East India Company, Malabar black gold, and Shakespeare, she will connect the East India Company’s import of Shakespeare with the export of spice from today’s Kerala state, and discuss the resulting literary fusion.
Front cover of William Shakespeare’s ‘Othello’ in Malayalam (1942). British Library, Mal B 737
In her talk in October, ‘Stages of Partition: Prithvi Theatre during the 1940s’, Dr. Salma Siddique, a postdoctoral research fellow at Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies, Freie Universität Berlin, will discuss how partition was ‘performed’ on stage before it had even happened. Using surviving transcripts, memoirs and press coverage, she reads in the repertoire both partition’s proleptic history and its creative force.
Image of Prithvi Theatre stamp from ‘Dīvār’ (1952). British Library, Hin B 13795
In November, Daniel Majchrowicz, an Assistant Professor of South Asian Literature and Culture at Northwestern University, will talk about Tukoji Holkar, Maharaja of Indore, his clandestine tour of Delhi, Agra and Haridwar and subsequent Urdu travelogue. This presentation will examine how and why princely travel writing appeared in mid-19th century South Asia and argue that the Maharaja's decision to write travel account – and to do so in Urdu – served to stabilize Indore's legitimacy and legacy at a time when colonial predations had rendered these increasingly precarious.
Image of the Palace of Indore from ‘Bagh I Nau Bahar’ (1852). British Library, 306.23.e.17
We will end the year with talks on alcohol and botanical publishing. On 11th December 2017, Dr Sam Goodman will argue in his talk ‘No beer to be had unless prescribed medically: Alcohol and Health in Colonial British India’ how alcohol was a paradoxical substance in the context of colonial British India, regarded as an evident source of personal and broader public risk, yet at the same time still used regularly in medical practice and perceived as vital to the preservation of health in both lay and professional contexts. He will draw upon courts martial proceedings, medical reports and other sources drawn from the India Office Archives from his talk.
Image from the ‘The Military Adventures of Johnny Newcome’ (1904). British Library, 012203.F.32/8
A full list of talks is given below, while the abstracts can be downloaded here:
Download BL South Asia Seminar Abstracts Long August-December with pics:
Monday 7th August 2017: Writing Empire: The Memoirs of Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur, Founder of Mughal India. Lubaaba Al-Azami (University of Liverpool).
Monday 21st August 2017: From Sri Lanka to the Western Front: Reginald Farrer's Buddhism. Prof. Michael Charlesworth (University of Texas-Austin).
Monday 4th September 2017: ‘In the spicèd Indian air’: the East India Company, Malabar black gold, and Shakespeare. Dr. Thea Buckley (University of Birmingham)
Monday 18th September 2017: Persian Grammar Books as a Get Rich Quick Scheme in Colonial Calcutta (Dr. Arthur Dudney (University of Cambridge),
Monday 2nd October 2017: In a Place of Dreaming and Secrecy: College Magazines and Young Womanhood in South India. (Dr. Sneha Krishnan (University of Oxford)
Monday 16th October 2017: Stages of Partition: Prithvi Theatre during the 1940s. Dr. Salma Siddique (Freie Universität Berlin)
Monday 30th October 2017: Applied Cosmology and Islamic Reform in North India: Shāh Walī Allāh of Delhi and the Urdu Common Reader. Daniel Morgan (PhD Candidate, University of Chicago)
Monday 6th November 2017: Princes, Politics and the Urdu Travel Account in mid-Nineteenth Century India. Daniel Majchrowicz (Northwestern University)
Wednesday 22nd November 2017: Reintroducing the Celebrated Niʿmatnāmah Half a Century Later. Dr. Preeti Khosla (Independent Scholar)
Monday 4th December 2017: Publishing colonial science: the struggle to communicate the results of the botanical investigation of India. Dr. Adrian Harris (King’s College London)
Monday 11th December 2017: ‘No beer to be had unless prescribed medically’: Alcohol and Health in Colonial British India. Dr. Sam Goodman (Bournemouth University)
Please do come along, listen and participate. No advance booking is required, and the sessions are free to attend. For further information, please contact:
Dr. Layli Uddin, Project Curator of ‘Two Centuries of Indian Print’