Dr Ananya Jahanara Kabir BA (Hons), Calcutta; MPhil, Oxford; PhD, Cambridge
For a list of publications since 2001 click here
Research Interests
I am research-active in a range of areas:
•
Political conflict and cultural belonging in South Asia, particularly the Kashmir
conflict
•
The memorial repercussions of the Partition of India
•
The formation and forms of South Asian vernacular modernities
•
The relationship between medievalism, Empire and post/colonial modernity
•
The cultures of global and local Islam, particularly Sufi music and performance
•
Cultural and identity politics in South Asian diasporas
•
Latin American and South Asian postcolonialisms in ‘South-South Dialogue’
Some of these interests look to previous work, others to future plans; some
are linked with collaborative work, others to doctoral research supervised.
However, a concern with modernity and its tensions underlie them all. Forthcoming
research will include comparison of South Asian and Latin American embodied
histories, towards which end I am learning Spanish (currently at level Intermedio
Tres) and taking Cuban dance lessons, at the Instituto Cervantes, Leeds, and
the Instituto Cervantes, Manchester, respectively.
As an AHRC Knowledge Transfer
Fellow (2007-2010), I am always interested in motivating the Knowledge Transfer
and collaborative dimension of research in
the Arts and Humanities. I am collaborating, through the AHRC Fellowship, with
Shisha: The International Agency for the Promotion of South Asian Crafts and
Visual Arts, Manchester (www.shisha.org) on the project ‘Borderlands’ (working
title): an exhibition of women artists from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and
Sri Lanka responding to conflict. I have been a member of the executive board
of SAA-UK (a Leeds-based organisation that promotes music and dance in Yorkshire),
and currently am on the steering committee of The Shape of Things, a national
initiative for the promotion of British artists making in craft media.
I review
academic publications for a range of journals including Nations and Nationalism,
Comparative Studies in South Asia, Africa and the Middle East,
Alif: Journal for Comparative Poetics, South Asian Visual Culture and The
Little Magazine (for which I also write occasional essays), am External Examiner on
the BA in South Asian Studies at SOAS, London, and, as a Research Associate
at The Centre for History and Economics, King’s College, Cambridge, and
Harvard University, am involved with the planning of its research activities.
In addition, I am a keen linguist: fluent in English, Bengali and Hindi, able
to find my way comfortably in French, German and Spanish, and always keen to
take on more languages (in the past I have also dabbled with Türkmen and
Arabic, and for my postgraduate research, intensively studied Old Norse, Old
English and Medieval Latin ).
I am available for consultation on any aspect of conflict resolution and community
cohesion that involves issues of culture, heritage and collective identity.
Media experience: TV, Radio, major Indian print media: eg:
‘
Our Way or the Highway?’, The Indian Express, http://www.indianexpress.com/news/our-way-or-the-highway/354295/
Summer of Discontent’, The Hindu, http://www.hindu.com/mag/2008/08/31/stories/2008083150020100.htm
Some of my earlier shorter pieces can be found in the archives of the website www.countercurrents.org
PhDs and some recent MA dissertations supervised
Mauritian Creolité and Sega music; Vaishnavism in Mauritian Literature;
The Re-Imagining of Bengal in fiction by Bengali diasporic authors; Siraiki
cultural resistance in postcolonial Pakistan; Negotiations of modernity in
contemporary Indian novels; Reconstructions of Identity among East African
British Asians; Representations of 1971 in Pakistani and Bangladeshi novels; ‘Adda’ and
a vernacular Bengali subaltern agency; the politics of British Asian music;
literary representations of South Asian political conflict.
Recent Activities
In November 2009, I spoke on the topic of my forthcoming book, Territory of
Desire: Representing the Valley of Kashmir, to the City Circle www.citycircle.com at London; the talk was organized jointly by the City Circle and Kashmir
Insight (www.kashmirinsight.com)
In November 2009, I spoke on the topic of ‘Cosmopolitanism, Transnationalism,
South-South Dialogue: Theorising the Salsa Scene in India’, at an ICPS
Research Salon organized by the Institute of Colonial and Postcolonial Studies
(ICPS), University of Leeds.
In October 2008, I attended the Research Councils UK India Office launch event
in Delhi as one of the AHRC’s nominated delegates.
In September 2008,
I visited the University of Toronto to participate in a workshop organised
by Professor Ato Quayson, in connection with the multi-volume
Cambridge History of Postcolonial Literature, under his general editorship.
In
April 2008 I attended a ‘Match-making Event’ at Paris organised
by HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area), which aimed to unveil to
the academic communities of seventeen European countries the aims and objectives
of the newly constituted HERA consortium. I was one of 250 participants selected
from across Europe to attend this meeting, and to receive a travel bursary
(Euro 500) in order to do so.
In July 2008, I shall give a paper entitled ‘British Asian Vernaculars’ within
a panel, Writing British Asian Cities, associated as part of our WBAC Diasporas
and Migrations network at the 20th ECMSAS (European Conference for Modern South
Asian Studies), held at the University of Manchester.
In June 2008, I participated
in a plenary panel discussion at ‘Acts
of Daring: A Summit for Crafts Leadership’ organised by Craftspace, Birmingham
and The Devon Guild of Craftspeople at the Contemporary Urban Centre, Liverpool.
In
June 2008, I travelled to Berlin, together with my Knowledge Transfer Curatorial
Team Fareda Khan of Shisha and Dr Daisy Hasan, Leeds, to attend the opening
of Indian artist Shilpa Gupta’s split-side show at the Galleries Volker
Diehl and Bodhi Berlin.
In May 2008, in connection with my AHRC Knowledge Transfer
work, Fareda Khan of Shisha, Manchester, and I travelled together on a curatorial
visit to Sri
Lanka.
In May 2008, I gave a paper at the Postcolonial Seminar, The University
of Oxford, entitled ‘Of Men, Rivers and Riverine Creatures: Sustainable
Parables from Bengal’.
In April 2008, I gave a plenary lecture entitled ‘Reflecting, Protesting,
Healing: Contemporary Indian Art on Collective Violence’ at ‘Reflections
and Revolutions’ the symposium associated with the first Asia Triennial
Manchester, and held at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester.
In April 2008,
I gave a paper entitled ‘Consecrated Groves: The Imperial
Utility of a Tacitean Trope’ at the Medieval Seminar, School of English,
University of Leeds.
In February 2008, I was an invited participant at the
workshop, ‘Logistics
of Perception’, addressing issues of representation concerning conflict
zones, organised by Majlis, Bombay, and held at Adishakti, Pondicherry, India.
In
January 2008, I participated in a panel discussion entitled ‘Literature
of Partition’ at the India Habitat Centre, Delhi, which was part of ‘Partition’s
Long Shadow’, an ongoing lecture series throughout 2007-8 commemorating
the sixtieth anniversary of the Partition of India.
Teaching
Undergraduate
Remembering
Partition
Postgraduate
Postcolonial
Representations
Representing
Kashmir: Bollywood and Beyond
Leeds Postcolonial Research Group
Institute for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies
If you have entered our site at this page, please click here to go to our main pages.