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Sent: Saturday, January 05, 2013 9:02 AM
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| Next RAS Student Series Lecture - Wednesday January 16th Posted: 04 Jan 2013 04:08 AM PST The first student series event of the new year will take place on Wednesday January 16th at 6.30pm with a double lecture evening. We will welcome Yin Hwang from SOAS to speak about 'Chinese visuality and Europe in the modern period' and Tanmayee Banerjee from the University of Westminster to lecture on 'Nationalism and internationalism in Indian English fiction, 1909-1930'.
Yin Hwang is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of the History of Art and Archaeology at SOAS having graduated from its Postgraduate diploma in Asian art and MA in Archaeology programmes. She has worked for Orientations magazine and was its managing editor from 2005 to 2009. Her broad areas of interest include Chinese painting and printmaking, visual print and popular culture, the historiography of Chinese art history and comparative modernaties in Asia. She has published articles on Chinese painting and printmaking, contemporary Asian art and the art market.
Summarizing her talk she says: "The binary of China and the West has been and continues to be a provocative one. As with all other areas of Chinese life, trade and globalization had, by the mid-19th century, exerted a tremendous impact on the art of painting in China. By drawing parallels between export painting and works of the Shanghai School, the phenomenon of Chinese artists painting 'China' for European consumers and depicting the west (i.e. modernity) for Chinese viewers is examined here. Both instances presented challenges to traditional Chinese pictorial depiction that had long been conditioned by convention and historical precedent. How was the familiar depicted for an unfamiliar audience and the unfamiliar depicted for a familiar audience? Realistic representation was the key. This paper examines how an 'art of describing' evolved to satisfy the desires of these diverse audiences." Tanmayee Banerjee has an MA, MPhil in English Literature from the University of Calcutta and is presently a PhD student at the University of Westminster, London. Her research interests include Indian English Literature; history of nineteenth and early twentieth century India, with special focus on Bengal; African-American literature; and Cinema Studies. She has also translated a number of nineteenth century Bangla short stories including one by Rabindranath Tagore. She has presented papers at conferences held at Calcutta, Hong Kong and London.
In summary of her talk Tanmayee says:
"While Tagore's concept of greater nationalism is much discussed today in the nationalist discourse, and the controversy regarding the plausibility of Gandhi's idea of ahimsa or non-violence is relevant even today, history has forgotten some extremely significant Indian English literary texts and their authors for some unknown reason. Through their fictional works these authors had professed the same ideas long before Tagore or Gandhi popularized them.
If novels and nation-building are really connected to each other in a mutually symbiotic relationship, there is no denying the fact that the development of the sense of nationalism and that of the Indian English novel took place simultaneously. The novels are of utmost importance for their socio-political context. It is because the publication of these novels or the period of action in their narrative space, were concurrent with the Proclamation of the Queen, the Partition of Bengal, the Rowlatt Act on one hand and the Sepoy Mutiny, foundation of Indian National Congress, Swadeshi Movement, Non Cooperation Movement and numerous localized reactionary movements throughout the country, on the other. Promoting the sense of nationalism, constructing the "Indian" identity and introducing India with her traditions and customs to the intellectuals of the West were the primary objectives of these novels. Myths and history of India and comparative analyses of various religious ideas were interwoven throughout the narratives.
But how does the evolving idea of Indian nationalism leave its impressions on the novels published through the various phases from the nineteenth century through to twentieth century? The novels published since the 1930s have been widely discussed by scholars. Therefore I will limit my analysis within the novels published before 1930. I will begin with Shoshee Chunder Dutt's Shunkur: A Tale of the Indian Mutiny of 1857 (1874), possibly the only English novel on the theme of the mutiny ever written by any Indian. I will then take up The Prince of Destiny: The New Krishna (1909) by Sarath Kumar Ghosh and Hindupore, A Peep Behind the Indian Unrest (1909) by Siddha Mohana Mitra. I will show how the reconciliatory disposition of these authors were misinterpreted as pro-imperialistic or even as abject slavery to the British, while they were trying to profess the idea of greater nationalism, to use Tagore's expression. Lastly, I will discuss My Brother's Face (1924) by Dhan Gopal Mukerji and Towards the Dawn (1922) by Jatindranath Mitra, in which the emergence of Gandhi as a national hero has been narrativised.
Pseudo-nationalism, greater nationalism and anti-colonial nationalism – this is how we can describe the changing pattern of the sense of nationalness in these obscure, yet highly significant, Indian English novels of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Whatever might be the reasons behind their slipping into oblivion, there would remain an immense void if this phase of literary evolution is neglected in the discourse of Indian English Writings."
The lectures will be followed by a question and answer session and a drink reception, they are free and open to all. For more information contact info@royalasiaticsociety.org and for directions to the Society visit our website.  |
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