CANCELLED - Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century

Unfortunately this session of the Washington History Seminar has been cancelled. Please check back on our website for a rescheduled date.

Joya Chatterji will discuss why she constructed Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century as she did, comparing India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and drawing out the strange and many likenesses they bear with each other. She will also reveal why she chose to “tear down the fourth wall,” to include herself and her own history in the book.

Joya Chatterji FBA is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Trinity College Cambridge.  Before her retirement for medical reasons, she was the first woman editor of Modern Asian Studies (italics) and first woman director of the Cambridge Centre of South Asian Studies.  The author of many academic works on India's partition and it aftermath, on migration and immobility, she is a committed public historian, and has driven change at many levels of the school syllabus in Britain. Shadows at Noon is her first work of public history.

The Washington History Seminar is co-chaired by Eric Arnesen (George Washington University) and Christian Ostermann (Woodrow Wilson Center) and is organized jointly by the American Historical Association and the Woodrow Wilson Center's History and Public Policy Program. It meets weekly during the academic year. The seminar thanks its anonymous individual donors and institutional partner (the George Washington University History Department) for their continued support.