BRAC University is pleased to announce a scholarly exchange and outreach program composed of three interconnected in-person workshops and an online symposium between BRAC University, University of British Columbia, National Institute of Technology (NIT) in Silchar, Assam, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), and University of Delhi. The project is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
The initiative is centred on a series of workshops in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, the three postcolonial nations that emerged in 1947- India and Pakistan (East and West) and then in 1971 when Bangladesh was formed out of what had been East Pakistan. By holding in-person interconnected workshops in each of these postcolonial states – and one online symposium – we hope scholars and students will create possibilities for exchange that are generally foreclosed by the national boundaries that divide the region.
The focus of the workshop at Brac University is primarily methodological and pedagogical, to assess the diverse range of approaches that have been brought to bear on the writing and teaching of Partition’s histories over the decades that have followed decolonization, and to encourage critical evaluation and innovation moving forward. We cannot engage with the history of Partition only from the vantage point of India: for too long, Partition’s historiography has been hampered by our national borders. This diversity in approaches to studying the 1947 Partition invites careful consideration of method and how different methodological approaches towards Partition create their object of study.
The questions that we pose in our workshop are as follows:
What are the drawbacks of the existing methods in Partition Studies? Can we think of new methods? How do the methodologies in question reconfigure our objects of study? How do biases and dispositions feed into methods?
How can we best comprehend memories concerning Partition? Which methodologies are most effective for addressing the formation and reproduction of memory?
Oral history is a foundational methodology utilized in studies of Partition; another substantial body of research engages with fictional representations and articulations of the Partition experience and its legacy. How can we bring the two strands – and various disciplines like anthropology, linguistics, sociology, history, and literary/cultural/film/media studies – into conversation?
What implications do diverse methodologies have for the pedagogy of Partition Studies? How is Partition to be taught in the contemporary classroom? What can Partition teach a young student and why must we study it? How do we attend to the politics of trauma and political renderings of that trauma?
What are the possibilities of the digital – for instance, digital archiving, digital narration, distant reading etc. – in reconfiguring historiographies concerning Partition?
