Trans-Colonial Modernities in South Asia

In this extension of a conference held in 2008 titled "Traditional Scholarship and Asian National Modernity," Dodson (South Asian history, Indiana U., Bloomington) and Hatcher (theology, Tufts U.) present insights on colonial modernity that offer a re-conceptualization of modernities in South Asia as diverse local cultural conjunctions as alternatives to the traditional perspective of resistance to/collaboration with colonialism. International transdisciplinary, transregional contributors apply a trans-colonial theoretical framework in examining cultural practices and norms, and patterns of contestation, convergence, and translation toward new world views from local, linguistic, and historigraphical vantage points. For example, several chapters focus on how intellectuals in colonial Bengal engaged with new conceptions of society, Christian missionaries, and printing. Annotation Ac2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Michael S. Dodson is Associate Professor of South Asian History at Indiana University, Bloomington, USA. He is a historian of British imperialism in South Asia, focusing particularly upon the intellectual, cultural, and urban history of the nineteenth century in north India.

Brian A. Hatcher is Professor and Packard Chair of Theology at Tufts University, USA. His research addresses such issues as the transformation of intellectual practice among Sanskrit pandits in colonial Bengal, the interrogation of modernity under the conditions of colonialism, and the expression of religious change in emergent Hindu movements.