Rebels, Wives, Saints

Rebels, Wives, Saints PDF Author: Tanika Sarkar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
In Rebels, Wives, Saints, acclaimed scholar Tanika Sarkar continues her revolutionary scholarship on women, religion, and nationhood in colonial Bengal. The colonial universe Sarkar describes in Rebels, Wives, Saints centers around symbols of women as both defiled and deified, exemplified in the idea of woman as widow and woman as goddess. The nation, Sarkar explains, is imagined as a woman-goddess within a country comprising plural cultural traditions. Sarkar also broadens the discussion to consider male reformers who battle Hindu conservatives, a Hindu novelist who idealizes nationalism as a means for overcoming Muslim influence, male-dominant social norms, and theatre and censorship. Throughout the book, Sarkar deploys her trademark focus on small, specific, emotional defining moments in order to arrive at a larger, compelling picture that reveals how people actually feel and experience life in Bengal.

Rebels, Wives, Saints

Rebels, Wives, Saints PDF Author: Tanika Sarkar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 374

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Rebels, Wives, Saints, acclaimed scholar Tanika Sarkar continues her revolutionary scholarship on women, religion, and nationhood in colonial Bengal. The colonial universe Sarkar describes in Rebels, Wives, Saints centers around symbols of women as both defiled and deified, exemplified in the idea of woman as widow and woman as goddess. The nation, Sarkar explains, is imagined as a woman-goddess within a country comprising plural cultural traditions. Sarkar also broadens the discussion to consider male reformers who battle Hindu conservatives, a Hindu novelist who idealizes nationalism as a means for overcoming Muslim influence, male-dominant social norms, and theatre and censorship. Throughout the book, Sarkar deploys her trademark focus on small, specific, emotional defining moments in order to arrive at a larger, compelling picture that reveals how people actually feel and experience life in Bengal.

Women of Sicily

Women of Sicily PDF Author: Jacqueline Alio
Publisher: Trinacria Editions LLC
ISBN: 9780991588602
Category : Sicily (Italy)
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Rarely have women found their place in the chronicles of Sicily's thirty-century history. Here one of Sicily's most popular historians introduces seventeen women of varied backgrounds who defied convention to make their mark in the annals of the complex history of the world's most conquered island. Meet a timeless sisterhood of pious Roman maidens, steadfast Sicilian queens, and a Jewish mother who confronted the horrors of the Inquisition. Theirs are inspiring stories of the courage of conviction bursting forth to overcome the challenges of adversity. The lengthier ten biographies constitute full chapters, while seven are concise sketches of a few paragraphs each. In addition to these profiles - most of these women lived before 1500 - the author presents a general survey and chronology of Sicilian history. Significantly, the book treats Sicily as the sovereign nation most of these women knew, and not as a 'region' of the unified Italy or a tiny piece of Europe. The chronology (timeline) reaches into the present century, and there's an appendix dedicated to Sicilian women today. Until now, biographies of Sicilian women written in English (as the original language) have been the work of foreign authors. This one is a milestone, the first book about the historical women of Sicily written in English by a Sicilian woman in Sicily. It reflects a special passion and an astute understanding of its subject. Some of the information is the result of original (scholarly) research, and a few facts were garnered from unique sources. The chapter on Queen Maria Sophia of the Two Sicilies, who died in 1925, is the lengthiest treatment of her ever published in English, and it was based in part on an unpublished interview with somebody who knew the Queen, namely her niece, the late Princess Urraca. Living links of this kind are precious in historical writing. While the concise overview of the status of women in twenty-first century Sicily is provided merely for the benefit of readers who wish to compare the past and present, the pages dedicated to that topic are a rare occurrence in book publishing, especially in English. Here the author's statements are based on facts and statistics rather than anecdotes or stereotypes. It is clear that she knows her subject. With its chronology and reading list, this volume is useful as a reference, but its narrative makes for an interesting read. Jackie Alio is an insightful author, one of Sicily's most talented historians, and this book was long overdue.

Words to Win

Words to Win PDF Author: Tanika Sarkar
Publisher: Zubaan
ISBN: 9383074663
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
The first autobiography in Bengali was written by an upper-caste rural housewife called Rashundari Debi (1809–1899). Published when she was 88 years old, Amar Jiban (My Life) is a fascinating first-hand account of life for women in Bengal at that time. Mother to eleven children, Debi reflects on her experiences and her spiritual development across almost an entire century. Words to Win incorporates translations of major sections of this remarkable autobiography. Tanika Sarkar studies the making of an early modern subject – the woman who wants to compose a life of her own, who wishes to present it in the public sphere and eventually accomplishes her goal: for it is her words that win out in the end. Published by Zubaan.

Saints and Misfits

Saints and Misfits PDF Author: S. K. Ali
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1481499246
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Fifteen-year-old Janna Yusuf, a Flannery O'Connor-obsessed book nerd and the daughter of the only divorced mother at their mosque, tries to make sense of the events that follow when her best friend's cousin--a holy star in the Muslim community--attempts to assault her at the end of sophomore year.

Guru to the World

Guru to the World PDF Author: Ruth Harris
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674287347
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 561

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Book Description
From the Wolfson History Prize–winning author of The Man on Devil’s Island, the definitive biography of Vivekananda, the Indian monk who shaped the intellectual and spiritual history of both East and West. Few thinkers have had so enduring an impact on both Eastern and Western life as Swami Vivekananda, the Indian monk who inspired the likes of Freud, Gandhi, and Tagore. Blending science, religion, and politics, Vivekananda introduced Westerners to yoga and the universalist school of Hinduism called Vedanta. His teachings fostered a more tolerant form of mainstream spirituality in Europe and North America and forever changed the Western relationship to meditation and spirituality. Guru to the World traces Vivekananda’s transformation from son of a Calcutta-based attorney into saffron-robed ascetic. At the 1893 World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, he fascinated audiences with teachings from Hinduism, Western esoteric spirituality, physics, and the sciences of the mind, in the process advocating a more inclusive conception of religion and expounding the evils of colonialism. Vivekananda won many disciples, most prominently the Irish activist Margaret Noble, who disseminated his ideas in the face of much disdain for the wisdom of a “subject race.” At home, he challenged the notion that religion was antithetical to nationalist goals, arguing that Hinduism was intimately connected with Indian identity. Ruth Harris offers an arresting biography, showing how Vivekananda’s thought spawned a global anticolonial movement and became a touchstone of Hindu nationalist politics a century after his death. The iconic monk emerges as a counterargument to Orientalist critiques, which interpret East-West interactions as primarily instances of Western borrowing. As Vivekananda demonstrates, we must not underestimate Eastern agency in the global circulation of ideas.

Much Ado Over Coffee

Much Ado Over Coffee PDF Author: Bhaswati Bhattacharya
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351383159
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 528

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Book Description
Based on oral history, fiction, fascinating intellectual gossip, and records of the Coffee Board of India, this study is a multi-sited ethnography of the Indian Coffee House, possibly the world’s first coffee house chain. It offers a critical analysis of adda (informal meetings) of the educated middle class in Allahabad, Calcutta and Delhi. The coffee house became the new socio-intellectual nerve centre, replacing the neigbourhood tea shops, and creating an entirely different social space. This book will have line drawings and cartoons as well as archival photographs.

Living with Religious Diversity

Living with Religious Diversity PDF Author: Sonia Sikka
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317370996
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Looking beyond exclusively state-oriented solutions to the management of religious diversity, this book explores ways of fostering respectful, non-violent and welcoming social relations among religious communities. It examines the question of how to balance religious diversity, individual rights and freedoms with a common national identity and moral consensus. The essays discuss the interface between state and civil society in ‘secular’ countries and look at case studies from the the West and India. They study themes such as religious education, religious diversity, pluralism, inter-religious relations and exchanges, dalits and religion, and issues arising from the lived experience of religious diversity in various countries. The volume asserts that if religious violence crosses borders, so do ideas about how to live together peacefully, theological reflection on pluralism, and lived practices of friendship across the boundaries of religious identity-groupings. Bringing together interdisciplinary scholarship from across the world, the book will interest scholars and students of philosophy, religious studies, political science, sociology and history.

The Politics of Belonging in India

The Politics of Belonging in India PDF Author: Daniel J. Rycroft
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136791140
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Since the 1990s, the Indigenous movement worldwide has become increasingly relevant to research in India, re-shaping the terms of engagement with Adivasi (Indigenous/tribal) peoples and their pasts. This book responds to the growing need for an inter-disciplinary re-assessment of Tribal studies in postcolonial India and defines a new agenda for Adivasi studies. It considers the existing conceptual and historical parameters of Tribal studies, as a means of addressing new approaches to histories of de-colonization and patterns of identity-formation that have become visible since national independence. Contributors address a number of important concerns, including the meaning of Indigenous studies in the context of globalised academic and political imaginaries, and the possibilities and pitfalls of constructions of indigeneity as both a foundational and a relational concept. A series of short editorial essays provide theoretical clarity to issues of representation, resistance, agency, recognition and marginality. The book is an essential read for students and scholars of Indian Sociology, Anthropology, History, Cultural Studies and Indigenous studies.

The Doctor and Mrs. A.

The Doctor and Mrs. A. PDF Author: Sarah Pinto
Publisher: Fordham University Press
ISBN: 0823286681
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Just before India’s independence, a young Punjabi woman, ill at ease in her marriage and eager for personal and national freedom, sat down with psychiatrist Dev Satya Nand for an experiment in his new method of dream analysis. The published analysis documents a surge of emotion and reflections on sexuality, gender, marriage, ambition, trauma, and art. “Mrs. A.” (as she is known) turned to female figures from Hindu myth to reimagine her social world and its ethical arrangements, envisioning a future beyond marriage, colonial rule, and gendered constraints. This book explores the conversation between Mrs. A. and Satya Nand, its window onto gender and sexuality in late colonial Indian society, and the ways Mrs. A. put ethics in motion, creating alternatives to ideals of belonging, recognition, and consciousness. It finds in Mrs. A.’s musings repertoires for the creative transformation of ideals and explores the possibilities of thinking with a dynamic concept of counter-ethics. An unconventional history of gender and sexuality in late colonialism, this book reminds us that the west did not invent feminism, that psychiatry’s history of innovation and creativity is global, and that ethical thinking does not need to center on western myths or paradigms.

Family, School and Nation

Family, School and Nation PDF Author: Nivedita Sen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317410629
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
This seminal work examines the concurrence of childhood rebellion and conformity in Bengali literary texts (including adult texts), a pertinent yet unexplored area, making it a first of its kind. It is a study of the voice of child protagonists across children’s and adult literature in Bengali vis-à-vis the institutions of family, the education system, and the nationalist movement in the ninenteenth and twentieth centuries.