47 – The In(ter)disciplined Archive

October 2, 2025
2:00 pm
H01
In this panel we aim to initiate a conversation in the field of South Asian Studies combining two specific nodes of enquiry: the (re)conceptualisation of the archive and the question of interdisciplinarity. The South Asian archive has become a question of investigation from the perspective of postcolonial and queer-feminist theory, and, particularly in light of the most recent changes in the politics of history-making in South Asia, it has been rethought in relation to power, (state) institutions and access, who / what is visible and who / what is buried (under papers or words). At the same time, recent studies have shown how the archive itself becomes a site of contestations, bringing forth the questions of relationality, violence, marginalisation – leading to the formulation of counter-archives (Appadurai 2003), away from the traditional, hegemonic instrument of the state. From anthropologists using archives as an ethnographic object (Stoller 2009) to sociologists of gender using the archive as a tool to criticise power, the social and cultural life of these repositories of knowledge have attracted a wider audience, not restricted to historical sciences alone. By adding to existing literature (for instance Mathur 2000, Lal 2011, Lambert-Hurley 2013), this panel invites scholars to (re)conceptualise, problematise and methodologically locate the archive from an interdisciplinary lens, enabling a conversation amongst un/conventional, alternative and emerging forms of knowledge production in the canon of South Asian Studies. As early academics, the convenors also want to bring together presenters from different stages in their career to further spark the flame of a critical discussion.

Convenors

Albrecht Jessica
Tirthankar Chakraborty

Presentations

‘What are you looking for?’: archiving Pondicherry’s industrial past 1954-2020
Sundararajan Bharat - School of History, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews, United Kingdom
Resisting Erasure: Hereditary Women Performers, Tamil Cinema, and the Politics of Counter-Archives
SADASIVAN SHYAMA - IIT KHARAGPUR, INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY KHARAGPUR, KHARAGPUR, India
Archives that don’t (let you) sleep: Lost Woman, City, and the Night in Mrinal Sen’s Ek Din Pratidin
Mukherjee Suddhadeep - Program in Comparative Literature, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, United States
The Archive as a Colonial Artifact: Feminist and Community-Centered Interventions in the Hanna Papanek Collection
Koshul Fariha - University of Chicago, University of Chicago, Chicago, United States
Malik Amina - University of Illinois, University of Illinois, Chicago, United States
A reluctant archive: reflections on archival fieldwork in Dhaka, Bangladesh
Hasselbach Vincent - Department of Anthropology, University College London, London, United Kingdom
Listening between the Lines: Mahishashuramardini and Early 20th-Century Radio Archives
Bhattacharya Sunayani - Associate Professor, Department of English, Saint Mary's College of California, Moraga, United States
Cooking Tips and Life Lessons: How Urdu Women’s Digests Wrap Around Muslim Lives
Anwar Oroosa - PhD Candidate (II year), University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom
Reconceptualizing the Archive: Religious Buildings as Transcultural (Counter)Archives
Percy Arfeen-Wegner & Shraddha Bhatawadekar - Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf