The Public Life of History - with Prof. Dipesh Chakrabarty

Dipesh Chakrabarty in conversation with Meera Ashar and Frank Bongiorno, reflecting on the public life of history in Asia and Australia and how historians participate in debates about the past.

Professor Dipesh Chakrabarty is the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor in History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago and the Deans’ Distinguished Visitor in the School of Culture, History and Language, College of Asia and the Pacific, ANU. His numerous publications include The Calling of History: Sir Jadunath Sarkar and His Empire of Truth (Chicago, 2015); Rethinking Working-Class History: Bengal 1890–1940 (Princeton, 1989, 2000); Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, 2000; second edition, 2008); Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies (Chicago, 2002). He is currently working on two books, provisionally entitled The Climate of History (Chicago) and History and the Time of the Present (Duke). He is a regular contributor to Bengali newspapers and journals published from Calcutta.

Dr Meera Ashar is a Lecturer in the School of Culture, History and Language at the Australian National University and Deputy Director of the South Asia Research Institute (SARI). She has previously worked as an Assistant Professor at the City University of Hong Kong and has been an LM Singhvi Fellow at the Centre of South Asian Studies at the University of Cambridge. Her research interests lie at the intersection of history, political theory and literary studies. Her publications address questions about identity, self-representation, colonialism, processes of decolonization and notions of the public in India.

Dr Frank Bongiorno is an Associate Professor in History in the College of Arts and Social Sciences at the Australian National University, and has worked previously at Griffith University, the University of New England and King’s College London. His most recent books are The Sex Lives of Australians: A History (2012) and The Eighties: The Decade That Transformed Australia (2015). He contributes frequently to the media on Australian history and politics.

All are welcome, but please register for catering purposes.

Presented by the School of Culture, History and Language, College of Asia and the Pacific.