Photo: Messenger
The Department of English and Humanities at BRAC University held a workshop titled ‘MEMORYSCAPES: Historiographies & Methodologies around the 1947 Partition’ at its Merul Badda campus recently. This is part of a scholarly exchange and outreach programme consisting of three interconnected workshops at National Institute of Technology (NIT) Silchar, BRAC University, and Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), with resulting publications.
These three workshops are the result of a two-year research project titled "Canonization of Partition Literature and the Politics of Memorialization in South Asia" (2023-2025). This project was launched with support from the Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration (SPARC) under India's Ministry of Education. Additionally, funding for the BRAC University Memoryscapes conference was provided by the University of British Columbia's Centre for Migration Studies, the Department of History, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
The opening session was led by Dr. Debjani Sengupta from Indraprastha College for Women, New Delhi, Prof. Anne Murphy from the University of British Columbia, Dr. Avishek Ray from the NIT, and Prof. Firdous Azim from BRAC University. This two-day workshop featured five panels that explored the 1947 partition from various angles, including literary representations, women's agency, oral narratives, museum records, colonial archives, and the use of visual, aural, and digital media.
The conversations covered topics such as identity crises, trauma and affect, violence, repatriation, and belonging, as well as the pedagogy surrounding partition. In addition to exploring the changing opportunities and responsibilities for both students and researchers, the workshop's lively exchanges between scholars, students, and historians were designed to stimulate innovative perspectives on how history is taught in the classroom.
On the opening day, Professor Pippa Virdee of De Montfort University gave the keynote speech, discussing how national anniversaries, commemorations, and memories can be used to retell the history of Partition. In his keynote speech on the second day, Prof Sayeed Ferdous from Bangladesh Open University examined the challenges of recognizing marginalized voices in Partition narratives.
The 2-day event brought together eminent academics, scholars and historians from around the world to deliberate on how the 1947 partition is memorialized and the pedagogical implications of teaching the new generation about this momentous event in the history of South Asia.
Messenger/Tushar
