Talk by Prashant Kidambi (History, University of Leicester )

Cantonments were a ubiquitous symbol of the military origins and underpinnings of British rule in South Asia. This talk, based on new research, seeks to rethink existing approaches to the study of cantonments. It critiques perspectives that view cantonments as sealed-off sites of untrammelled colonial power, abstracted from the historical processes shaping the wider society. My analytical framework brings politics back into the study of these putatively ‘military’ zones and restores agency to those who have hitherto been construed primarily as the malleable objects of colonial disciplinary power. In the process, I underscore the significance of cantonments in the making of urban South Asia.

Prashant Kidambi is Professor of Urban History at the University of Leicester. Professor Kidambi’s research explores how modern South Asia was shaped by empire and nation. He has written extensively on Indian cities, public culture, politics, and sports. He is the award-winning author of Cricket Country: An Indian Odyssey in the Age of Empire—the first work of sports history to be shortlisted for the prestigious Wolfson History Prize—and the editor of Bombay Before Mumbai, a path-breaking collection of essays on India’s ‘maximum city’. He is currently working on a new biography of the controversial Indian nationalist leader Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856-1920).

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Master Javanese gamelan musician Wakidi Dwidjomartono joins the Cornell Gamelan Ensemble and students taking Gamelan in Indonesian History and Cultures for a program of traditional Javanese gendhing.

Talk by Shozab Raza (Anthropology, University of Toronto)

In recent years, we have seen renewed efforts to “decolonize.” From the toppling of statues to the revision of disciplinary canons, much of this effort has focused on overturning colonial residues in our cultural and epistemological landscapes. This talk offers a radically different vision of decolonization — one driven not by bureaucrats, professors or social media activists, but by subaltern actors, a vision that was at once global and local, dedicated equally to dismantling the less visible structures of political economy as it was to fighting epistemic battles. I focus on how landless peasants in Pakistan — participating in a global communist movement stretching from Oakland to Saigon, from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean — reinvented revolutionary theory in their struggles against imperialist political economies. Joining a Mao-inspired party in the 1970s, these peasants not only occupied colonially-established estates (jagirs), but also acquired a meta-recognition that “theory” — now an emic category — was essential to global revolution. Some peasants retheorized Eurocentric Marxisms through the lens of Sufi Islam, while others developed theories of communist becoming inspired by Baloch tribal norms. I conceptualize these subaltern experiments in theory-making as trench theory, with the trench metaphor flagging a mode of subterranean theorizing grounded in political combat. Ultimately, this talk shows how subaltern actors drew on ideas spanning intellectual traditions, borders, and oceans to generate trench concepts aimed at heralding nothing short of a worldly, even other-worldly, liberation.

Shozab Raza is an Assistant Professor of Social Justice Education, with a cross-appointment in Anthropology, at the University of Toronto, and a 2024-25 Fung Global Fellow at Princeton University. He was previously an Agrarian Studies Fellow at Yale University and completed his graduate training at the University of Toronto and the University of Oxford. As a historical anthropologist, his research and teaching focuses on revolutionary political imaginaries and political economy as these unfold across Asia, the Indian Ocean, and beyond. He is finalizing his book manuscript, Theory from the Trenches, which explores how colonial residues and capitalist transformations inspire not only political but also theoretical insurgencies from below. Shozab’s research has been published in several journals, including Cultural Anthropology and Comparative Studies in Society and History, while his public writing has appeared in venues like The Guardian, Boston Review, and Red Pepper. He is also a founding editor of Jamhoor, a movement-oriented Leftist magazine focused on South Asia and its diasporas.

Talk by Pinky Hota (Anthropology, Smith College)

The Violence of Recognition explores the roots of ethnonationalism conflict between two historically marginalized groups—the Kandha, who are Adivasi (tribal people considered indigenous in India), and the Pana, a community of Christian Dalits (previously referred to as “untouchables”). Hota documents how Hindutva mobilization led to large-scale violence, culminating in attacks against many thousands of Pana Dalits in the district of Kandhamal in 2008. Bringing Indigenous studies as well as race and ethnic studies into conversation with Dalit studies, Hota shows that, despite attempts to frame these ethnonationalist tensions as an Indigenous population’s resistance against disenfranchisement, Kandha hostility against the Pana must be understood as anti-Christian, anti-Dalit violence animated by racial capitalism. Hota’s analysis of caste in relation to race and religion details how Hindu nationalists exploit the singular and exclusionary legal recognition of Adivasis and the putatively liberatory, anti-capitalist discourse of indigeneity in order to justify continued oppression of Dalits—particularly those such as the Pana. By showing how indigeneity works as a political technology that reproduces the political, economic, and cultural exclusion of landless marginalized groups such as Dalits, The Violence of Recognition reveals the violent implications of minority recognition in creating and maintaining hierarchies of racial capitalism.

Pinky Hota is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Smith College, with affiliations with the Program for the Study of Women and Gender and South Asian Studies. Her research has been funded by the Wenner-Gren and Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundations, and published in Modern Asian Studies, Anthropological Quarterly, and Political and Legal Anthropology Review. Her research interests lie in caste and race, religion, technology and capital, and extractive economies. The Violence of Recognition, published by University of Pennsylvania Press in 2023, is her first book.

Talk by Sohini Chattopadhyay (History, Union College)

In May 1939, a 20-year-old man died in Bombay’s suburb of Vile Parle. He was a migrant worker, often without a home, and Dalit. His friends took his body to a cremation ground, but only by trespassing it at night since Dalits were not allowed access to the cremation ground that offered traditional funerals for dominant caste Hindus. Seemingly unconnected, the same year, the Bombay Legislative Council introduced a proposal to have a public electric crematorium in the city, which would be accessible to all. This paper links incidents of civil disobedience, such as the one in Vile Parle, to the political and social forces behind the establishment of Bombay’s first public electric crematorium. By analyzing these acts of resistance within the broader context of labor and anti-caste movements and a simultaneous comfort with new death technologies, the paper illuminates the complex interplay between public health infrastructure, colonial governance, and the struggle for social justice. The electric crematorium, as a response to these tensions, emerges as both a symbol of technological progress and a tool for social equality, highlighting the intertwined histories of caste, technology, and urban development in colonial Bombay.

Sohini Chattopadhyay (she/her) is currently an Assistant Professor of History at Union College. Her current book project, tentatively titled "Dead Labor: Comparative Histories of the Electric Crematorium in Colonial Bombay and Calcutta", tracks the intersections between technologies and social histories to underscore the connected and divergent patterns of urbanization in South Asia. Alongside courses in South Asian history and history of science, Sohini has also designed team-taught courses with the engineering school as part of the Science and Technology Studies Program. She received a PhD in History from Columbia University in 2023 and also holds an MA from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India. Sohini is also invested in public history. She was the founding editor of the web journal Borderlines and is now developing its advisory board. She frequently contributes articles on public health, social policies, and South Asian history on Indian digital media platforms.

Talk by William Lodge, II (Public Policy, Cornell University)

This presentation delves into the intersectional and syndemic barriers affecting HIV care among transgender women and Hijras (TGW) in India. Drawing on findings from a multi-method study conducted in Mumbai and New Delhi, the talk illustrates how compounded multilevel barriers—including mental health conditions, intersecting forms of stigma, and economic marginalization—impede effective HIV care for TGW. Utilizing quantitative and qualitative insights, the presentation sheds light on how these challenges intersect and magnify each other, further hindering ART adherence and viral suppression. The presentation aims to contribute to a body of knowledge that informs policy and promotes a responsive and inclusive HIV care model tailored to TGW in India.

William Lodge II is an assistant professor at the Cornell Brooks School of Public Policy and a National Institutes of Health (NIH) FIRST Faculty Fellow. A behavioral and social scientist, Dr. Lodge is dedicated to advancing health equity and improving HIV prevention and care among gender and sexual minorities in the U.S. and globally. Dr. Lodge’s research integrates syndemic theory and intersectionality to understand and address multilevel barriers in HIV prevention and care by focusing on how social and structural determinants—such as stigma and discriminatory policies—shape health outcomes, particularly emphasizing marginalized communities in India and the U.S.

IES Graduate Fellows will be presenting their work in conference style presentations followed by time for discussions. Presenters will be:

Panel 1

Alican Taylan- Architecture Art Planning- "Disentangling Modernity and Colonialism: The St. Joseph Mission School in Ngasobil, Senegal"

Victoria Pihl Sørensen- Performing and Media Arts- "Making “Moral Mothers” and “Better Babies”: Reckoning with Eugenics in the History of Reproduction in Denmark"

Maria Luisa Palumbo- Architecture Art Planning- "Histories of Land, Grain, and Architecture Across Italy and Libya, 1912-1943"

Panel 2

Nora Siena- Romance Studies- "Inside/Outside: Primo Levi’s Liminal Relationship with Jewishness as a Source for Critique"

Rachel Horner- Music- "Remapping València in the Festival Borderlands"

Matt Finck- History- "The Cosmologies of Victor Serge: Science and Catastrophe in the Revolutionary Novel"