All are invited to join the next meeting of the monthly History of Knowledge Seminar Series.
Rohan Deb Roy (University of Reading), ‘Decolonise Mosquitoes’
Date: Thursday 17 February 2022
Time: 15:30-17:00 (CET/Amsterdam-time)
Place: Online (Microsoft Teams)
No registration needed. Please click here to attend the meeting
Abstract
The decolonial turn in the academy is recent but pervasive. Scholarly manifestoes in many academic disciplines, ranging from ethnography to geology, have urged on the need to explore, and contest the impacts of colonialism in their respective fields. But what possibilities and challenges are revealed when decolonising insights are applied to rethink specific categories in animal history? In this talk, I address this question by focussing on mosquitoes in British India. In the process, I will elucidate three distinct historical processes: ‘invisible labour’, ‘dissent’ and ‘re-colonisation’. I will argue that the project of ‘decolonising mosquitoes’ should be grounded on a scholarly praxis that enables historians to formulate newer critiques of colonialism. I will also comment on why it is problematic for such a project to seek convenient alternatives in post-colonial nationalisms.
Speaker
Rohan Deb Roy is an Associate Professor in South Asian History at the University of Reading, where he is also Co-Director of the Centre for Health Humanities. He is the editor of the British Journal for the History of Science Themes, an associate reviews editor of the American Historical Review, a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and the Royal Historical Society, and the author of Malarial Subjects: Empire, Medicine and Nonhumans in British India (Cambridge University Press, 2017).
More Information
This seminar is organized by Lukas M. Verburgt and Elske de Waal with support from the Descartes Centre, NIAS, and the Huizinga Institute. Please visit our website for more information, the full 2021-22 program, and to subscribe to our newsletter.