Farina Mir: “Reconsidering Modernity in an Indian Vernacular: Punjabi Literature and the Writing of Colonial History”

FARINA MIR

University of Michigan, Associate Professor of History

KAPANY ENDOWMENT VISITING LECTURE SERIES

About the Talk

This talk considers the literary history of one Indian vernacular tradition, Punjabi, to interrogate assumptions about the temporality of literary history embedded in today’s normative mode of writing the history of literature, assumptions critically linked to notions of modernity. Identifying at least two types of temporality in existing literary history, an even temporality, on the one hand, and one that emphasizes rupture, on the other it argues for the adoption of a third mode: “lumpy time”, a concept drawn from the work of sociologist William Sewell. The broader aim of the talk is to show how assessments of modernity in literary history mirror a broader tension in South Asian historiography between indigenous agency and colonialism.

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