Archives at NCBS | Public Lecture Series
https://www.ncbs.res.in/events/apls
65th edition
Monthly talks framed around explorations in and around archives. Discussions by artists, archivists, academics, lawyers, teachers, journalists and others.
 
Scripts and Voices in the Archive
Prachi Deshpande
 

Friday, Sep 20, 2024. 4:00pm.
Lecture Hall – 1 (Haapus), NCBS
Details: https://bit.ly/apls-scriptslanguage

Abstract: How do we preserve knowledge about language usage and practice? Scholars have sought histories of language in everything from morphemes and words to textbooks and literary canons as source materials. In this talk, I trace how historians from the 19th century onwards sought to create such an archive to write a deep history of the Marathi language. Alongside, I lay out the different kinds of archival materials I have used to examine Marathi language practices in my recent book Scripts of Power: Writing, Language Practices and Cultural History in Western India. Through a focus on scripts, multilingual interactions and writing practices in materials ranging from Maratha legal records and manuscript notebooks from religious mathas to colonial revenue survey materials, textbooks, and CID shorthand notes, I explore what insights a cultural history of language has to offer us about the way we use language and archives, and think about language history.  

Bio: Dr. Prachi Deshpande is 2020 laureate of the Infosys Prize in Humanities. Dr. Deshpande’s research focuses on social and cultural history of historiography, language, and regional identities, particularly of Western India. Prachi Deshpande is Associate Professor of History at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences in Kolkata, India. Dr. Deshpande has published scholarly works in English and Marathi. Her first book Creative Pasts: Historical Memory and Identity in Western India, 1700-1960 (2007) examined the emergence of modern history-writing practices in the Marathi-speaking areas of western India, and the importance of historical memory in shaping an enduring Maharashtrian regional identity. Her second book, Scripts of Power: Writing, Language Practices, and Cultural History in Western India (2023), examines changing relationships between writing, script and language through a focus on the cursive Modi script, and underlines the importance of the material world of writing to the modern linguistic state.