Posting for application season! Went through US/UK PhD applications last year with multiple offers. Fully know how taxing it is. I couldn't have done it without the kind help from friends & strangers. Here to help anyone in allied fields navigate this maze!
The absolute impunity with which English-speaking, English-writing researchers write on vernacular sources with little to no engagement with existing vernacular knowledge/ discourse is dangerous and structurally exploitative. It misdirects readership elsewhere 1/n
Reading for a chapter and feeling like everything has already been written about the topic and now my only option is to leave my PhD. Aaaaaaaa. Help. Pls.
It becomes an authoritative voice within the global discourse on that vernacular source/ such vernacular sources/ knowledge. The people working within that vernacular discourse do not get any entry into that global discourse being made. 2/n
There exists no mechanism to check plagiarisms and misreadings/ omissions of vernacular traditions which have not been translated or widely circulated. The world goes on being round. n/n
Me at 19 at Kennedy Auditorium, AMU.
And as British author Laurie Lee wrote in the opening pages of his memoir 'As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning',
"I was nineteen years old, still soft at the edges but with a confident belief in good fortune"
There are only two ways of functioning as a researcher. Feeling like writing a whole book on one word, OR, feeling like not writing a single word on a whole book.
I received an invite from the Biden administration for a Diwali event being held by the VP on nov 8. I decline any invitation from an institution that supports the collective punishment of a trapped civilian population—50% of whom are children.
So fulfilling organising this conference with
@stoootee
on the politics of documentary practices, archiving, and creative imaginations. Humbled listening to such exciting papers from around the globe!
@CambridgePoco
@englishunicam
This brilliant adaptation of Crane’s piece by Andrea Bowers was the greatest at Tate this week. It not only contemporised the slogans, but also used cardboards and markers entirely for the work. May Day ✊
Boarded a flight while 6 kids are crying on top of their voice right next to me. Their father (don’t ask) is doing “tota udd, mayna udd” and mother doing “bhruuuu” sounds. All six kids are repeatedly buckling and unbuckling their seatbelts. Please help.
Watched Oppenheimer. Allegedly a film about venerating a war criminal which spent 70% of screen time showing anti-commie propaganda. Even commies don’t take themselves so seriously.
A wonderfully productive and fun day today at the
@RoyalHistSoc
Bengal Famine Workshop. At the end of 3 vibrant panels and a film screening & discussion, we are still bustling with energy. Such great presentations on famines and their afterlives. Big thank you
@ananya_jahanara
By the end of PhD gonna make a glossary of words with lesser problematic histories so that I don’t encounter “seminal” and “pioneering” in every three sentences. Over.
Kiran Kapoor, RWA president of Tulip Orange in Sector 70, said the operations of the society has taken a toll as housekeeping staff have left work. “They are afraid to work and live in the city. There is no one to clean the towers and the premises,” she said.
@HTGurgaon
@htdelhi
Excited to discuss bits and pieces of my work tomorrow at this fantastic workshop. Thanks so much
@BPriyanka_KCL
and
@ananya_jahanara
for organising this!
Love when the Indian top 1% refers to themselves as middle class. It should be named the Sudha Murty syndrome. Or as someone else said, bhai isse accha toh mamidala hai.
Grades Matter
These two photographs are from the 1978-79 issue of my school magazine The Columban.
In that era grades were not private and they were published in our school magazine.
In 1978 around 200 students in my batch wrote the Class 10 Board exam.
The list in the
Season’s first Tok’er Dal - split peas or matar dal cooked with tart raw mangoes and just a hint of sugar, and tempered with mustard seeds and chilies! I typically pair it with mashed potatoes or a dryish pumpkin and potato curry with lots of fried bori (wadi) in it!
Me with generational refugee trauma everytime I’m next to people from Bangladesh: where is your home, my grandparents lived in an entirely different region than yours before migrating 75 years ago. Sigh.
This recent book on Rosa I hold very close to my heart. It came out last year, and was glad to contribute to the volume especially because of its experimental format. Happy Birthday, comrade Rosa ❤️❤️
Replugging the
@NewBooksNetwork
podcast again where we spoke about Brahminism, iconographies and political mobilisation. Our article is out in print here -
Thanks a bunch to
@K_Bo_Nielsen
& Solano Da Silva! DM me for free eprints, and send comments!
After two whole years of drilling into my students what race/ gender/ caste/ ableism based micro aggression is and how to avoid it in an Indian classroom, here's me shuddering every three seconds trying to navigate top western academia. Fun!
Anyone writing on how academics accumulate social capital & clout on social media and how majorly this is shaping ppl's careers & career opportunities? And of course - who it is leaving out?
Very reassured today about certain life choices I made despite other people’s (well meaning) concerns. Politics always shows the way, and helps find care and solidarity amid hostility ❤️
শুভ নব বর্ষ!
May we be like these paan eating and hookah smoking women this (Bengali) new year.
( 📷: Women, called Bibis, shown smoking hookah and eating betel leaves. Kalighat style of painting, 1875.)
The term card for our seminar is out now! Join us as we kick off the Michaelmas term with the following speakers for the Postcolonial and related seminar at
@engunicam
The most important question anyone has ever asked Wasim Akram - how responsible does he feel for inspiring every 90s launda to get the burger cut hairdo?
Remember teaching this absolute brilliance of a novel a while back, and discussing the work with
@anniezaidi
and
@mosarrapkhan
❤️❤️ still remains one of the best I've read in a decade.
We are thrilled to welcome our first speaker of this term, author Annie Zaidi (
@anniezaidi
), presenting her talk on 'Breaking Form: Genre, Voice, and Praxis.'
Date: October 26, 2023
Time: 5-7 pm
Venue: SR-24 at
@englishunicam
I was delighted to come across this in
@HousmansBooks
yesterday. My Sylheti parents squatted when they first came to London – something I had no idea about for *years*. So much of the Sylheti story has been lost and I'm glad for this little slice of it. Thank you,
@shabnabegum76
.
We are thrilled to welcome our first speaker of this term, author Annie Zaidi (
@anniezaidi
), presenting her talk on 'Breaking Form: Genre, Voice, and Praxis.'
Date: October 26, 2023
Time: 5-7 pm
Venue: SR-24 at
@englishunicam
LIBERATION🏳️🌈THE FIRST EVER PRIDE FLAG RAISED IN GAZA!
Under Hamas, being gay means death. Israeli Yoav Atzmoni wanted to send a message of hope. See his story below.
To Gaza’s hidden LGBTQ+ community: STAY HOPEFUL of a future where you can live and love free of Hamas!
Important. Flew back and forth last week between Delhi and Kolkata and was pestered everytime to register for DigiYatra. Important to spread the news before they make it seem/ make it mandatory.
GMR Group partnered with IDEMIA to deploy facial recognition tech for DigiYatra service at Delhi, Hyderabad, and Goa airports. Digi Yatra is run by a private 'non-profit body', not covered under RTI.
The only thing I wanted in 2022 was to be able to read a book end to end without interruption or loss of attention.
Just did. Magically. I got into bed with a book at around midnight. 2.5/3 hours. 400 pages.
I feel like myself again.
Another milestone achieved.
@Harvard
University has added
#caste
to its non-discrimination policy.
Our congratulations and sincere thanks to the students and faculty, whose dedicated efforts led to this great accomplishment.
The Domino Effect is in play.
#BanCasteInUSA
If you've ever shied away from offering solidarity to Palestinians because you don't feel sufficiently informed, this website, run by Palestinians in the West Bank, offers an accessible but rigorous history
This was incisive as a teaching and learning module. You still find examples of microaggressions about gender, race etc, but nothing can be found on caste on the internet. I hope more and more universities pick it up.
The Supreme Court of India recently released a handbook on combating gender stereotypes. Similar attention to the usages of the English language in relation to caste should also be explored, writes Sumit Baudh
"I made a mistake by getting the child beaten up by the students. I am handicapped and could not get up, so I asked the students to beat the child. The video has been tampered with." Tripta Tyagi.
#ArrestTriptaTayagi