Copenhagen South Asia Workshop

One day workshop on "Writing South Asia"

Copenhagen South AsiaWorkshop (CSAW) invites researchers engaged in the studies of South Asia to reflect upon the ways in which societies write and are written about through history. The workshop aims at a collective exploration of different modes of expression, practices of record keeping, technologies of archive, and ethnographic incursions. These include a wide range of writings produced by the pre-colonial, colonial and postcolonial state authorities from census databases, district reports, handbooks and manuals, history textbooks to writing by individuals such as travel writing, works of fiction, biographies, memoirs and autobiographies. The idea is to reflect upon how words form, inform and even deform different subjectivities and identities.

Tanika Sarkar, Professor of Modern history, Jawaharlal Nehru University will deliver the key note address 'Words to Win: A Modern Autobiography' that draws our attention to how autobiographical writing became a particular mode of expression among women during the colonial times.

Tanika Sarkar is currently a Visiting Fellow Commoner at Trinity College Cambridge. Some of her major publications include Bengal, 1928-1934: The Politics of Protest. Oxford University Press, Delhi: 1987; Words to Win: a Modern Autobiography. Kali for Women, Delhi: 1999; Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Religion, Community, Cultural Nationalism. Permanent Black, Delhi and Indiana University Press: 2000

Centre of Global South Asian Studies and Asian Dynamics Initiative, University of Copenhagen