[Reader-list] IEG panel discussion: The Emergence of Cultural Studies in India

[Rajesh Ramakrishnan]

You are invited  to  a panel discussion  on Monday,  September 29, 2008 to
be held in the  VKRV Rao  room in IEG between 2: 30 - 5: 30 pm.

Comprising of  distinguished  scholars, this panel  will reflect on *The
Emergence of Cultural Studies  in India*. This event is part  of the ongoing
series  of discussions  on disciplinary formations  in the  Indian social
sciences. It forms a   sequel to the earlier  discussion held  in IEG  on *The
Possibility  of a Contemporary History : The Politics of Knowledge and
post-1947 Disciplinary Formation in the Social Sciences* (EPW  report April
18, 2008.)

Please do come and  contribute to the  discussion, your
participation*will  be much appreciated
*!




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*Panel discussion                      *



*On the Emergence of  Cultural  Studies as  a Field in **India** *


 ________________________________________________________________*    *

*      (**conceptualised by  Veena Naregal, IEG  & Prathama Bannerjee, CSDS)
** ***



The proposed panel seeks to understand the emergence of cultural studies as
a knowledge-field in contemporary India. In this panel we hope to explore
the history of cultural studies on its own terms and territory, and not as a
'soft' discipline, somewhat displaced from mainstream disciplinary
formations of the social sciences.



Importantly, we hope to examine the place of cultural studies within the
shifting contexts through which ideas of culture and cultural policy get
formulated in post-1947 India, while simultaneously interrogating its
relation, as an inter-disciplinary field, with its 'parent' disciplines
within the Indian social sciences.

**

*Speakers : *

Prof.  Krishna  Kumar, NCERT

Dr. G. Arunima, *JNU*

Prof.  P.K. Dutta, *DU*

Dr.  Soumya Chowdhury, *JNU*

*Discussant: TBC.
*

**

The  questions  before the panel  willl include :

A.    *State/Development/ Education*



·        instrumentalisation of culture for developmental goals

·        the subsumption of the culture question within a centralised vision
of relations between the nation and its region presumed by developmental
planning.

·        the consequent relegation of culture as a minor part of education
policy

·        the  political hesitation after Independence to reopen the culture
question beyond its inscription within officially sanctioned discourses on
cultural authenticity and the sanctity of tradition



*B.  Literary Studies and the Vernaculars *

* *

·        questions of statehood and language and how that reconfigures the
space of vernacular literature

·        the hegemony of the canonical and formalistic model of English
literary studies over regional language departments

·        the question of English and the nation's language policy

·        the role of the Sahitya and state akademies in managing regional
literatures as passive recipients of minimalist doses of state patronage

·        implications of the above for the ways in which the contemporary
and the regional get figured within mainstream social sciences

* *

*C.  Inter-disciplinarity / Culture / Marginality *



·        post – 1947 disciplinary trajectories, the politics of knowledge
and articulations of marginality/culture

·        the breaking away of gender studies as an autonomous/
interdisciplinary field in the 1970s

·        Indian cultural studies as a departure from gender studies : the
Hyderabad moment and after

·        articulations of inter-disciplinarity : cultural studies within
institutional trajectories at CSDS/ CSCS/ CSSS

·        the cultural turn and the structural crises / impasse  within the
Indian social sciences

**

**

*D. Performance Studies, post-1947 Cultural History : Insights in to the** *
* **Contemporary*

·        India's 'culture' in anthropology/history/ policy discourse
/literary studies

·        Performance studies, cultural studies :    possible dialogues

·        cultural arenas  and the contemporary : the conversation with
mainstream social science





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-- 
Dr. Veena Naregal

Reviews Editor, Contributions to Indian Sociology
& Associate Professor
Institute of Economic Growth
University Enclave
Delhi 110007, INDIA

Tel.: 91-11-27667101
Fax: 91-11-27667410
email:veena at iegindia.org <email%3Aveena at iegindia.org>
        veena.naregal