Anne Murphy (Ph.D. Columbia) is Associate Professor in the Department of Asian Studies and co-Director of the Centre for India and South Asia Research at the University of British Columbia. She is also Acting Associate Dean for Faculty and Program Development, Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies, for 2018-9. She teaches and conducts research on the vernacular literary and religious traditions of the Punjab region (India & Pakistan). Current research pursues two interrelated lines of inquiry: modern Punjabi cultural production in the Indian and Pakistani Punjabs and in the Diaspora, and the early modern history of Punjabi's emergence as a literary language. Her monograph, The Materiality of the Past: History and Representation in Sikh Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2012), explored the construction of Sikh historical consciousness within texts, objects and religious sites from the eighteenth century to the present, and a thematically related volume entitled Time, History, and the Religious Imaginary in South Asia (Routledge, 2011). She pursued her continuing interests in commemoration and memorial practices in a volume entitled Partition and the Practice of Memory (Palgrave, 2018) co-edited with Churnjeet Mahn (Strathclyde University). She has published articles in History and Theory, Studies in Canadian Literature, South Asian History and Culture, the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, and other journals. She taught previously at the New School for Social Research, and is originally from New York City.

 

Locating a Punjabi classic: Regional and Linguistic Affinities in Waris Shāh's Hīr (18th c.)

6 juin 15h -17h | Salle AS1_23, 54 bd Raspail 75006 Paris

Waris Shah's Hīr, widely considered a quintessentially Punjabi literary text, expresses complex linguistic and regional affinities that its designation as a "Punjabi classic" might occlude. This lecture considers the diverse regional and cross-regional affinities expressed within the text, and the ways in which its linguistic character functions to both localize and broaden these affinities, and to shape Punjabi at intersection with Persian.

Dans le cadre de l'atelier thématique Histoires de soi, histoires des autres : questions de traduction et d’historiographie

 

Punjabi literature and the possibility of the secular in India and Pakistan

11 juin, 13h30-16h30 | Salle 737, 54 bd Raspail 75006 Paris

This talk will explore the complex relationship between the Punjabi language and the state in Pakistan and India, and the troubled nature of both Punjabi’s incorporation into state interests and its marginalization. It does so through a focus on key Punjabi language writers and their positioning in relation to both the literary and the state, and exploration of a notion of the secular that undergirds much modern Punjabi literary work.

Dans le cadre du séminaire Actualités de la recherche en Asie du Sud

 

The work of memory: Engaging the severed past along the Indo-Pakistan border

14 juin, 14h-17h | Salle 737, 54 bd Raspail 75006 Paris

This talk, delivered jointly with visual artist Raghavendra Rao K.V., addresses "memory work" along the Indo-Pakistan border that attempts to call to mind a once-shared culture that now is divided by the international boundary. The focus of the presentation is an ongoing project that includes a set of residencies that occurred in the Indian Punjab in 2018 and culminated in an exhibition near the border, on the Indian side, in February 2019, and a residency program planned for December 2019 in Lahore, Pakistan. Results of both residencies will meet in Canada, for an exhibition that reflects on the view across the border, from both sides. The work will be placed in the context of a larger effort to integrate the arts and research in addressing cultural history and the quest to remember.

Dans le cadre du seminaire Partitions territoriales : imaginaires et représentations

 

A language and a cause: Progressive politics and the Punjabi literary

21 juin, 10h30-12h30 | Salle RJ 23, BULAC, 65 rue des Grands Moulins, 75013 Paris

This talk explores the progressive roots of modern Punjabi literature (in relation to the broader history of vernacular cultural production) and the centrality of its approach to gender. Within this context, it explores the work of Ajeet Cour and Dalip Kaur Tiwana, two prominent women within the first generation of post-colonial Punjabi language writers in India, and the articulation of women's writing within the persistent patriarchy that haunts the progressive ethos of Punjabi literature. 

Dans le cadre du séminaire mensuel du projet DELI : Littératures d’Asie du Sud