Winter School on the Partition

National Institute of Technology Silchar (9-13 December 2024)

The winter school on the Partition is a part of a 2-year research project entitled “Canonization of Partition Literature and the Politics of Memorialization in South Asia” (2023-2025) that is supported by the Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration (SPARC), Ministry of Education, and being led by Dr. Avishek Ray (NIT Silchar), Dr. Debjani Sengupta (I.P. College, Delhi University), Dr. Anne Murphy (University of British Columbia) and Dr. Sarah Ansari (Royal Holloway, University of London).

The winter school comprises two modules: "Methodologies in Partition Historiography and Remembrance" and "History goes Public!" to be led by Dr. Anne Murphy (University of British Columbia) and Dr. Sarah Ansari (Royal Holloway, University of London) respectively. Dr. Avishek Ray (NIT Silchar) and Dr. Debjani Sengupta (I.P. College, Delhi University) will lecture occassionally. Modules 1 and 2 together comprise a 30-hour winter school to be held in person at the National Institute of Technology, Silchar, from 9-13 December 2024.

Module 1: Methodologies in Partition Historiography and Remembrance

Level: UG/PG

Lead Instructor: Anne Murphy (University of British Columbia)

Discipline: Humanities

Field: Partition Studies, Memory Studies, Cultural Studies, South Asian History

Lecture hours: 15 hours

Duration: 9-13 December, 2024

Pre-requisites: Basic familiarity with the history of late colonial India

This module focuses on methodology: the different methods that scholars have engaged to understand and analyze the Partition, and to engage with how the Partition has been remembered and understood. The module addresses multiple forms of evidence utilized for understanding the Partition: archives, personal narrative and oral history, creative work, material culture, political discourse, etc.

Anne Murphy is an Associate Professor in the Department of History and Chair of Punjabi Language, Literature and Sikh Studies, University of British Columbia. She is a cultural and intellectual historian whose work focuses on the Punjab region of India and Pakistan, with interests in language and literary cultures, the history of the Punjabi language in South Asia and beyond, religious community formations in the early modern and modern periods (with special but not exclusive attention to the Sikh tradition), oral history, commemoration, historiography, the history of ideas, and material culture studies. Her current research concerns modern Punjabi literature in the Indian and Pakistani Punjabs and in the broader Punjabi Diaspora, and the early modern history of Punjabi’s emergence as a literary language.

Module 2: History Goes Public!

Level: UG/PG

Lead Instructor: Sarah Ansari (Royal Holloway, University of London)

Discipline: History

Field: Partition Studies, Memory Studies, Cultural Studies, South Asian History

Lecture hours: 15 hours

Duration: 9-13 December, 2024

Pre-requisites: Basic familiarity with the history of late colonial India

‘Public History’ is about understanding how the past has affected, and is used in, the present. It brings history to life and helps us understand today’s relationship between the past and the public. Public History can involve history in the community, while a public historian might appear on TV or radio, help governments and policy makers, or be involved in community history projects. Thus, this course – History goes Public! – introduces participants to how historical knowledge is currently being produced, mediated and consumed in public spaces existing beyond the formal education sector. It examines how and how far institutions such as museums, galleries, monuments and archives function as gatekeepers of historical knowledge and conduits of social memory. It also looks at where collecting oral testimonies fits into the ways in which public historians operate in the twenty-first century and ways in which social media is contributing to public discourses about the past.

Sarah Ansari is Professor of History at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is a historian first and foremost of South Asia's recent past. Her latest monograph Boundaries of Belonging: localities, citizenship and rights in India and Pakistan, which she has co-authored with William Gould, was published by CUP in November 2019. More generally, her research interests tend to focus on the history of (1) the province of Sindh and its mega-port city of Karachi, and (2) the lives of women in South Asia. In terms of themes, they include migration, refugees, and citizenship. Between 2007-2010 she was the co-investigator on an AHRC-funded collaborative research project entitled 'From Subjects to Citizens: Society and the Everyday State in India and Pakistan, 1947-1964'.

Course Plan and Recommended Readings

Click here to access the course plan.

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