Premchand In Translation: Keynote and Plenary

Keynote: Vasudha Dalmia

Vasudha Dalmia is a Professor Emerita of Hindi and Modern South Asian Studies, University of California at Berkeley. The body of her work may be described as the study of cultural formations, grouped around four broad thematic clusters: the politics of religious discourse, transitional cultural phenomena of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, the politics of the literature of the new nation-state, particularly of modern Indian theatre, and studies of the position of women in these transitions. Her monograph, The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions: Bharatendu Harischandra and Nineteenth Century Benaras (1997), studies the life and writings of a major Hindi writer of the nineteenth century as the focal point for an examination of the intricate links between politics, language, culture, religion and nationality. Her work on drama, Poetics, Plays and Performances: The Politics of Modern Indian Theatre (2006), tracing the genealogies of theatre in modern at the appropriation of 'folk' theatre as it sought to constitute itself anew after independence. Of her many edited works are: The Oxford India Hinduism Reader (2007), Hindi Modernism: Rethinking Agyeya and his times (2012) and The Cambridge Companion to Modern Indian Culture (2012).