Prameha and Upadangsha: Vernacular Histories of Venereal Diseases in Late Colonial Bengal

Abstract

While the histories of colonial medicine have highlighted the hegemonic impact of western bio-medical notions on indigenous understanding of diseases, recent historians working with marginalized vernacular archives in the colonies have brought into focus the vernacular understanding of diseases that not only survived the onslaught of western clinical notions and therapeutic practices but got a fresh lease of life through the growth of a shared medical market of vernacular print and medicines. I would look at the vernacular histories of syphilis and gonorrhoea in the context of late colonial Bengal. Locally known as upadangsha and prameha, these indigenous categories of venereal diseases elicited much debate and discussion in the late 19th century Bengali public sphere, while indigenous understanding of these diseases, circulated through the local commercial circuits. Using commercial advertising material and vernacular medical print, I would try to recuperate the vernacular histories of venereal diseases in the context of late colonial Bengal. In doing so, I would question some of the assumptions held by colonial medical historians who overwhelmingly concentrate on state sponsored western medicine and in turn ignore the rich histories of vernacular medicine.

Speaker: Ratnabir Guha

Research Scholar, CHS, SSS, JNU

Venue:  Committee Room, Central Library, JNU

Date and Time: 16^th August 2014 (Saturday), 4:00 pm

In Search of the Real: Writing the Past in Colonial India

Abstract

During the colonial period, writing the past became central to the self-hood of colonial subjects. The past came to be written in different genres and its ethics and protocols were widely debated in the public domain. My paper deals with one aspect of this debate – the meaning of historical reality. I shall explore this with reference to the work of the Hindi novelist Vrindavanlal Verma (1889-1969) and a few other Hindi littérateurs of the late colonial period. Their work on historical subjects – poetry, play, novels – betrays an underlying tension between the positivist certitude about empirical facts and the romantic desire for a past that might not be accessed by positivist methods. I shall investigate this tension by examining their choice of form for narratives of the past and their use of oral and written sources for reconstructing the past. Falling outside the domain of professional history-writing, their works are indicative of the wider cultural tensions central to many post-colonial societies. Belying any totalizing narrative of modernity or colonial difference, they draw our attention to multiple oppositional discourses and practices within the West and the non-West and the complex web of interconnections between them.

Speaker:

Akash Bhattacharya

Research Scholar, CHS, SSS, JNU

Venue:  Committee Room, Central Library, JNU

Date and Time: 9^th August 2014 (Saturday), 4:00 pm

 

On the Symbiotic Relationship between Institutions and Values: With Special Reference to Corruption

Abstract

Individuals are constrained to act within the framework of the societal institutions. The totality of actions by individuals in the society determines the outcomes at the social level. The nature of these outcomes determines which social values will be realized and which ones will not be realized. As individual values and preferences are not completely autonomous, in general being influenced by the dominant social values, the choice of institutional structure has profound implications for both individual and social values. The phenomenon of corruption ruptures the relationship between institutions and values in several different ways. An analysis of this process has the potential of enhancing one's understanding of how corruption of certain kinds can pose grave threats to the society.

Speaker:

Prof. Satish K. Jain

Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, SSS, JNU

Venue:  SSS I Committee Room, JNU

               Date and Time: 24^th April 2014 (Thursday), 4:30 pm

"Folk Performance” from an Ethnocentric to an Aesthetico-political Understanding

Abstract

On part of the mutual learning program, this paper would like to familiarize audience with some of the key debates around “folk performance” in India. Most often, such performance is viewed from an ethnocentric perspective which not only denies its political dimensions but also obfuscates its artistic and aesthetic factors. Indeed, folk performances have both an artistic and a political dimension and both go together in its creative process. The aesthetico-political framework attempts to reconcile both these elements together in its understanding of folk performance and its broader connection with culture and society. Thinking through language, landscape, rhythm, body and movement, this paper would like to discuss the aesthetic and the politics of Indian folk performance and its ongoing appropriation in corporate cultural industries and marginalization in academic discourses. The paper suggests that Indian folk performance is not a homogenous category, and therefore, the hierarchies within the folk society also need to be recognized.

                                 Speaker: Dr. Brahma Prakash

School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU

Venue:  Committee Room, Central Library, JNU

Date and Time: 17^th April 2014 (Thursday), 4:30 pm

The Invention of Hinduism for National Use

Abstract

This paper discusses the ways in which the category "Hinduism" became available for national use, as a political resource. It argues that various forms of Indian nationalism mobilised the term "Hindu" or variants thereof in a number of ways, and suggests that these uses, of "Hindu" as religion, race or nation, can be dated to very specific points in relatively recent time. 

Speaker:

Benjamin Zachariah

ICCR Professor, Halle University, Research Fellow, Karl Jaspers Centre, Heidelberg University

Venue:  Committee Room, Central Library, JNU

Date and Time: 15th March 2014 (Saturday), 4:30 pm

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Theoretical Perspectives of Globalization: The Case of Sport

Abstract

Globalization refers to the intensity of interconnectedness across world. Events occurring in one part of the globe may have its ramifications in various other parts.  The market forces and electronic means of communications (such as the internet and telecommunication) stand out as classis examples. However, this phenomenon invites few intriguing questions. Has states lost their significance in the globalized era? Or does the state and the market forces share a complementary relationship? The proposed discussion seeks to contextualize the theoretical dimension of globalization in the realm of sport (cricket and football). Besides, the discussion intends to investigate several greys area of globalizing phenomenon pertaining to the conception of identity. In a nutshell, the paper seeks to investigate the political as well as the economic aspects related to the globalizing tendencies on cricket and football.  

Speaker:  Avipshu Halder , 

Research Scholar, CIPOD, SIS, JNU

Venue:  Committee Room, Central Library, JNU

Date and Time: 1^st March 2014 (Saturday), 4:00 pm

Link Prediction in Social Networking

Abstract

Many social, biological, and information systems can be well described by network. Where nodes represent individuals, biological elements (proteins, genes, etc.), computers, web users, and so on and links denote the relations or interactions between nodes.

A network is represented by a mathematical structure called a graph. Where a graph G is a structure consisting of a set of vertices V (also called nodes), and a set of edges E (also called arcs or links).Great efforts have been made to understand the evolution of networks (by R. Albert, A.-L. Barab ́asi). Social networks are very dynamic objects, since new edges and vertices are added to the graph over the time. Understanding the dynamics that drives the evolution of social network is a complex problem due to a large number of variables. But, a comparatively easier problem is to understand the association between two specific nodes. Hence we predict the likelihood of a future association between two nodes, knowing that there is no association between the nodes in the current state of the graph. Predicting certain changes to a social network is called the link prediction problem. Liben-Nowell & Kleinberg (2003) explain it as:

Given a snapshot of a social network at time t, we need to accurately predict the edges that will be added to the network during the interval from time t to a given future time t'  where  t < t' .

Link prediction has also many applications outside the domain of social networks. For example, in e-commerce it can help build recommendation systems; in the security domain link prediction identifying the structure of a criminal network (i.e., predicting missing links in a criminal network using incomplete data); in bioinformatics link prediction can be used to find interactions between proteins etc.

Speaker: Kushal Veer Singh,

Research Scholar, SCIS, JNU

Venue:  Committee Room, Central Library, JNU

Date and Time: 18^th February 2014 (Tuesday), 4:30 pm