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Call for Papers "Knowledge Production and Pedagogy in Colonial India: Missionaries, Orientalists, and Reformers in Institutional Contexts" School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London German Historical Institute London London (UK) 13-15 November 2008 __________________________________________________ Recent scholarship on colonial knowledge production has moved beyond the discourse analysis inspired by the work of Edward Said toward a more historically nuanced and richly sourced understanding of the subject. The overall effect of this recent research has been to revise our notions of colonial knowledge as a wholefrom the coherent and hegemonic instrument of rule advocated by an earlier generation of scholars to a more fractured, dialogically produced, potentially open-ended and socially unstable mass of ideas and practices. New lines of research have addressed the wider intellectual contextualisation (both in the colony and metropole) of orientalist (and to a certain extent missionary) knowledge (Majeed 1992, Mackenzie 1995), as well as a deeper exploration of the careers of colonial scholars and particularly their relations with indigenous informants and cultural intermediaries (Irschik 1994, Bayly 1996, Wagoner 2003, Dodson 2002). In addition, these studies have broadened the field of inquiry to include the contribution of European, mainly German scholarship (Rocher 1993, Pollock 1993, Dalmia 2003). This conference will seek to take stock of this revisionist historiography by looking at the interface between ideas and practicebetween the diffuse and fractured knowledge produced by Orientalists, missionaries and local interlocutors on the one hand, and the potentially more blunt new educational institutions founded under colonial rule on the other. Potential research questions which will be explored at the conference will include the following: - the degree to which the production of knowledge about India and the generation of policies in education and reform were more or less continuous or at variance with one another across time; - conceptual, methodological and stylistic differences between various strands of colonial scholarship as they impinged upon the development of pedagogical realities; - the potentially diverse relations between schools, museums, and centres of higher learning; the importance of Indian elites in the production and pedagogic implementation of this knowledge about India; - how we might approach the wider dissemination of orientalist pedagogies beyond the realm of colonial institutions. This Conference will be jointly organised by the Department of History at SOAS (University of London) and the German Historical Institute London, and will take place 13-15 November 2008. It will be open to researchers at all levels, pending submission and acceptance of title and abstract (150-200 words), by June 18, 2008. Papers should represent unpublished research or writing in progress. The organisers welcome work on diverse materials, and especially wish to encourage Islamic and Persianate alongside Sanskriti and Hindu Orientalist contexts. For further details, please contact: Dr Daud Ali School of Oriental and African Studies Email: [email protected] Dr Indra Sengupta German Historical Institute Email: [email protected] __________________________________________________ InterPhil List Administration: http://interphil.polylog.org Intercultural Philosophy Calendar: http://cal.polylog.org
