This Thursday(27 March) at 7 pm IST, we are hosting the next session of our Talking Texts series on Dr. Ashokan Nambiar’s book, “Print and Novel in 19th Century Kerala: Reconsidering Colonial Modernity”(Bloomsbury).
Prof. Udaya Kumar (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi) and Dr. Rochelle Pinto (Azim Premji University, Bangalore) will join as discussants, with Dr. Rekha Raj, (Institute of Social Studies Trust, New Delhi) moderating the session.
This Friday at 7 pm IST, we are hosting the next session of our Talking Texts series on Dr. S. Harikrishnan’s book, “Social Spaces and the Public Sphere: A Spatial-history of Modernity in Kerala”(Routledge).
Prof. Dilip Menon (University of Witwatersrand, South Africa) and Dr. Carmel Christy (University of Connecticut, United States) will join as discussants, with Dr. V.J. Varghese (University of Hyderabad) moderating the session.
Join us on 12 February at 7 PM IST for an exciting discussion on Darshana Sreedhar Mini’s book “Rated A: Soft-Porn Cinema and Mediations of Desire in India” (University of California Press, 2024), as part of our Talking Texts series.
Prof. Gayatri Devi (Savannah College of Art and Design) and Prof. Bindu Menon (Azim Premji University) will join the author in conversation. Dr. V. Abdul Lathief (Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit) will chair and moderate the session.
On the 30th December 2024 at 7:00 PM IST, we are delighted to host the third session of our Talking Texts series. In this edition, we will discuss Dr. K.N. Sunandan’s Caste, Knowledge, and Power: Ways of Knowing in Twentieth-Century Malabar (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Prof. Rajesh Komath (Mahatma Gandhi University) and Deepti Sreeram (Ashoka University) will join as discussants, with Dr. Divya Kannan (Shiv Nadar University) moderating the session.
Please join us by registering at ishorekerala@gmail.com.
We are thrilled to announce our 24th webinar led by the distinguished Prof. Arjun Appadurai (Goddard Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University). Join us as he explores earlier and recent theories on the global movements of labor, bodies, and commodities, shedding light on the circulation of forms that preceded the commodity flows. Prof. Brian Edwards (Dean and Professor, School of Liberal Arts, Tulane University) will provide commentary based on his collaborative research on port cities.
We are proud to partner with MES Mampad College for this event. Dr. Manzur Ali, the College Principal, will chair the session, while Divya Kannan (Shiv Nadar University) will moderate it. Don’t miss out on this engaging session! Register by scanning the QR code or sending an email to ishorekerala@gmail.com.
Abstract
I grew up in a generation of scholars influenced by Wallerstein, Gunder Frank, J. Abu-Lughod and other pioneers who tried to theorize transnational and transregional movements of labor, bodies and commodities. Much later in my scholarly career, the study of the links between bodies of waters began to draw global scholarly attention: oceans, rivers, lakes, ponds, as well as shores, coasts, and ports became visible to scholars of global processes. I was an early user of the term “flow” to describe the dynamics of globalization. In this lecture, I revisit their image of “flow” to rethink the circulation of forms, which often precedes and defines the flow of commodities.
We are delighted to announce that Professor Ananya Jahanara Kabir (King’s College London) would lead our 23rd webinar with a talk on Cochin and its creole and archipelagic memory (see the abstract below) this Thursday (27 Apr) at 7 pm IST.
Dr. Rajesh James (Sacred Heart College, Cochin) would comment on the lecture, and Dr. V.J. Varghese (University of Hyderabad) would chair and moderate the session.
Abstract
In this presentation, I will examine how fiction offers a route to recall, valorise, and reactivate the creolisation processes set into motion by the advent of the Portuguese on the Malabar Coast at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries. In particular, I will examine novels that depict the Latin Catholic community that formed thereby, including N. S. Madhavan’s Litanies of Dutch Battery, Johny Miranda’s Requiem for the Living, Ponjikkara Rafi’s Ora pro nobis, and George Thundiparambil’s Maya. In these novels, the geography, history, and community dynamics of the area known as Fort Kochi are invoked through a narrative technique that I call archipelagic. Using literary close reading alongside theories of creolisation and archipelagicity, I will reveal the political significance of thus narrativizing the Latin Catholics even while arguing for the theoretical inadequacy of the vocabulary of ‘syncretism’ frequently deployed to characterise Kochi’s culture.
We are extremely happy to announce that Prof. Shivaji Panikkar (former dean of Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda; and professor at Ambedkar University, Delhi) would lead our 22nd webinar. As an Art Historian, he will talk about Indian art collectives in the 1980s (see the abstract below).
Dr. Kavitha Balakrishnan (Govt. College of Fine Arts, Thrissur) would be the discussant, and Sudheesh Kottembram (RLV College of Music and Fine Arts) would chair and moderate the session. We are equally happy to collaborate with Govt. College of Fine Arts for this event.
Please register by sending an email to ishorekerala@gmail.com.
Abstract:
For several reasons early to mid-1980s can be located as defining years for contemporary Indian art. The social responses through art threw open the limits of “social art” in the exhibition Place for People (1981), a very significant moment when Indian art turns political and takes a turn towards global alignments. Starting with the manifesto of Group 1890 by J. Swaminathan, two other art manifestos namely Place for People exhibition catalog essay written by Geeta Kapur and Questions and Dialogue (1987), the manifesto/exhibition catalog essay of the Indian Radical Painters and Sculptors Association written by Anita Dube will be considered as path-breaking towards the formations of extreme political ideals and aspiration in the art field. The presentation will argue that without a robust notion of subjectivity and an avowal of the agency of the radical artist persona, there is no relevance of individual freedom and liberation, no locus of struggle and opposition, and no agency for progressive political transformation, which are manifested in newer ideological positions of Feminists, Queer and of the subalterns.
We are organizing a public seminar on an integrated approach towards the early modern history of Kerala on the basis of sources from multiple languages. The event initiates a dialogue between specialists in Dutch, Malayalam, Syriac and Arabic sources produced in/on Malabar during the so-called “Dutch period” between the late-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Speakers would explore how diverse sources with arguably different cultural provenances could potentially construct or deconstruct different epochs in regional and global histories.
The seminar follows three masterclasses-cum-workhop led by Prof. Jos Gommans, Dr. Lennart Bes and Dr. Binu John Mailaparambil on using the Dutch archives to study Kerala’s past. In the workshop, 13 researchers from different Indian and international universities would participate.
We are delighted to announce our first event of this year: two eminent historians discuss two latest books on South Indian history.
Gopinath Ravindran (Vice Chancellor, Kannur University) would discuss Abhilash Malayil’s “Ryotwari: Company State and Political Economy” and N.J. Francis (Professor, Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit) would discuss Lennart Bes’s “The Heirs of Vijayanagara: Court Politics in Early Modern South India”. Both authors would respond to the questions and comments.
Noted academic and activist, Dr. Rekha Raj would chair and moderate the session.
This event is our first offline event and will be held in Cochin in collaboration with the Aazhi Archives.
Written by Ishore AdminMarch 23, 2025 
