Sutapa Dutta | Gargi College, University of Delhi (original) (raw)

Books by Sutapa Dutta

Making the 'Woman' : Discourses of Gender in 18th-19th century India, 2023

The book examines the representation of women, their agency and subjectivity, and gender relation... more The book examines the representation of women, their agency and subjectivity, and gender relations in 18th and 19th-century India. The essays in the volume interrogate notions and discourses of ‘women’ and ‘gender’ during the period, historically shaped by multiple and even competing actors, practices and institutions. They highlight the ‘making of the woman’ across a wide spectrum of subject areas, regions and roles, and attempt to understand the contradictions and differences in social experiences and identity formations of women. The volume also deals with prevalent notions of masculinity and femininity, normative and non-conformist expressions of gender and sexual identity, and epistemological concerns of gender, especially in its intersectional interplay with other axes of caste, class, race, region, and empire.

Routledge, 2021

This book examines interactions between Britain and India through the analytical framework of the... more This book examines interactions between Britain and India through the analytical framework of the production and circulation of knowledge throughout the long eighteenth century. Disciplined Subjects is one of the first works to analyse the imperial school curriculum, and the ways in which it shaped and influenced Indian subjectivity. The author focuses on the endeavours of the colonial government, missionaries and native stakeholders in determining the physical, material and intellectual content of institutional learning in India. Further, the volume compares the changes in pedagogical practices, and textbooks in schools in Britain and colonial Bengal, and its subsequent repercussions on the psyche and identity of the learners.

Drawing on a host of primary sources in the UK and India, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of modern history, education, sociology and South Asian studies.

The Discourse of British and German Colonialism: Convergence and Competition, 2020

The Chota Nagpur plateau, which is today the state of Jharkhand in eastern India, is one of the o... more The Chota Nagpur plateau, which is today the state of Jharkhand in eastern India, is one of the oldest regions of the world with the richest concentration of mineral resources and natural vegetation in the country. The region, mainly inhabited by aboriginal tribes, has however remained one of the most backward and marginalized areas of the country. Since the beginning of the 19th century these simple tribal people have been caught in the vortex of contesting claims over them which have had lasting repercussions on their socio-economic development and on their sense of identity and belongingness. Christian missionaries of various denominations had a huge stake in these people, and their active evangelization resulted in a sizeable tribal population adopting Christianity. This chapter examines the attempts of the British administrators and German missionaries to ‘civilize’ this region by introducing Western education among the tribal people in the mid-19th century. The introduction of formal schools by the missionaries and their attempt to retrieve the tribal peoples from a ‘primitive’ stage of development and integrate them into mainstream civilization has resulted in a series of complicated entanglements between the adivasis (original inhabitants) and the dikus (outsiders). An overview of the contributions of the German missionaries, the Gossner Lutherans in particular, and the British colonialists, and their rapid incursion into the lives of the adivasis will bring to light the appropriation of contesting claims over these people, and the extent to which missionaries and colonialists were agents for the re-formation of indigenous society.

Routledge, 2020

This book studies the exclusive refractive perspectives of British women who took up the twin cha... more This book studies the exclusive refractive perspectives of British women who took up the twin challenges of travel and writing when Britain was establishing itself as the greatest empire on earth. Contributors explore the ways in which travel writing has defined women’s engagement with Empire and British identity, and was inextricably linked with the issue of identity formation. With a capacious geographical canvas, this volume examines the multifaceted relations and negotiations of British women travellers in a range of different imperial contexts across continents from America, Africa, Europe to Australia.

Maping India: Transitions and Transformations 18th-19th Century, 2019

This book presents an alternate history of colonial India in the 18th and the 19th centuries. It ... more This book presents an alternate history of colonial India in the 18th and the 19th centuries. It traces the transitions and transformations during this period through art, literature, music, theatre, satire, textiles, regime changes, personal histories and migration. The essays in the volume examine historical events and movements which questioned the traditional parameters of identity and forged a new direction for the people and the nation. Viewing the age through diverse disciplinary angles, the book also reflects on the various reimaginings of India at the time.

This volume will be of interest to academics and researchers of modern Indian history, cultural studies and literature. It will also appeal to scholars interested in the anthropological, sociological and psychological contexts of imperialism.

Routledge, 2020

Anthem Press, UK, 2017

About This Book ‘British Women Missionaries in Bengal, 1793-1861’ looks at the arrival of the ea... more About This Book

‘British Women Missionaries in Bengal, 1793-1861’ looks at the arrival of the early British women missionaries in Bengal, especially when travelling to India or working in missions was neither a spontaneous nor an acceptable career decision for white women. The book aims to throw light on a key moment in colonial contact, a new interface between two races, religions and ways of life. From a hesitant beginning as ‘helpmeets’ to a more confident phase of mission activities in the form of setting up formal educational institutions, writing books and so on comprise a long legacy of white women’s participation in overseas colonial encounters. Historicizing imperial feminism will enable those who choose to use the past to locate and interrogate its ramifications on more ‘modern’ notions of feminism. The advent of the Baptist missionary William Carey in Bengal in 1793, followed by others, significantly altered how mission activity was perceived in India. From Hannah Marshman, who helped her more famous missionary husband Joshua Marshman to open schools for girls, to Mary Ann Cooke, the first single British woman missionary to come and work in India, to Hannah Mullens’s contributions to zenana education, were all part of a long journey which helped professionalize women’s missionary work in the colonies. With the death of Hannah Mullens in 1861, the ‘early’ phase of missionary work came to an end and then began a more proactive phase of evangelization and missionary activity in India.

Readership: Such a work will be useful for students of missionary studies and for readers interested in female agency in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British India. It will also appeal to scholars grappling with the anthropological, sociological and psychological contexts of gender and imperialism.

Book Chapters by Sutapa Dutta

Routledge, 2020

The paper looks at the records of some British women travellers to India between 1770-1870, and c... more The paper looks at the records of some British women travellers to India between 1770-1870, and closely analyses their recordings of experiences with Indian women in the zenana. These accounts mostly in the form of journals that the British women maintained during their sojourn in India, and the letters that they regularly wrote back home to their friends and relatives, demonstrate their changing attitude towards the zenana within a span of hundred years. The encounter between memsahibs and Indian women in the zenana provide a historical framework to understand the complex relationship between the binaries of self and other.

Honore Champion, Paris, 2017

Cambridge Scholars Publishing, U.K., 2016

Mapping India: Transitions and Transformations, 18th-19th century, 2020

Travel Guidebooks, Vade Mecums, or Ars apodemica, the genre of travel advice writing flourished a... more Travel Guidebooks, Vade Mecums, or Ars apodemica, the genre of travel advice writing flourished across Europe from the 16th century onwards and gained much popularity with imperialism, improved transportation and printing trade in the 18th and 19th century. As more and more merchants, mercenaries and missionaries travelled to distant lands, access to information on people and places was more for a practical purpose of survival rather than just self-development. Guidebooks on India, this chapter argues, was primarily for knowledge gathering, for absorbing and recording information, employing a rhetoric of usefulness for both individual and state. The essay traces the development of guidebooks on India from the early vade mecums written by the English East India Company officials, to more corporatized travel guidance by Murray and Bradshaw. From simple survival advice books to a more confident ‘knowing’ of the land under possession, from a standardised way of seeing India to a grand spectacle for consumption, these guidebooks charted out the territorial sovereignty and hegemony of the British in India.

Papers by Sutapa Dutta

History of Education

A geophysical perception of the ecumene had always existed in the consciousness of Indians even i... more A geophysical perception of the ecumene had always existed in the consciousness of Indians even in precolonial days. But with the advent of the British, and with the establishment of territorial mapping and institutionalised education, there was a growing awareness of differences and similarities related to ethnicity, race and space. Colonial schools and education played a critical role in developing a sense of belongingness to a shared space. As Bengal was the hub for colonial administration as well as for dissemination of education, a look at history and geography textbooks, in both English and Bengali, highlights how the Bengali educated class negotiated this construction of knowledge. The article analyses the production of knowledge as a complex imagining of a 'national' space that refashioned and forged intricate geopolitical consciousness, which then went on to have vital implications for the future conception of nation-state in India.

Disciplined Subjects, 2020

The Discourse of British and German Colonialism, 2020

Social Change, 2022

The making of the enlightenment in the age of imperial expansion through the analytical frame of ... more The making of the enlightenment in the age of imperial expansion through the analytical frame of knowledge and pedagogies were subjects of debate in nineteenth-century India, and continue to remain so. There was a set of complicated political, social and psychological process involved in colonial schooling in India as a public site to frame native subjectivities. This has resulted in a unique formulation of racial-civilisational location of Indian subjectivity, with its alternate configuration of power. The article seeks to emphasise the disparate discourses on the prevalent education system, and the reaction of Bengali intellectuals towards ‘modern’ Western pedagogy in nineteenth-century Bengal. The critical debates, ranging from commendation to condemnation underline the dilemma of a period of transition. As a subject of experimental formulations of ideas and system, the native learner was at the centre of a cultural tussle that got torn between Western impositions and nationalist...

South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2021

Abstract The emergence of the bhadralok in the nineteenth century, typified by ‘genteel’ qualitie... more Abstract The emergence of the bhadralok in the nineteenth century, typified by ‘genteel’ qualities and Western education, reflected changes in the nature of Bengali identity and subjectivity. The colonial experience resulted in an anxiety among elite Bengalis to define a social class for themselves that would delineate their gentility and shape a new code of ‘acceptability’. The ‘Babu’ came to be associated with this new class of Bengalis eager to adopt Western manners and learning who formed the greater part of the white-collar workers required in the cosmopolitan enclave of Calcutta. They were satirised, particularly in colonial discourse, for their imitation of English manners, attire and language. This article explores the shifting markers of gentility and the satiric representation of the Bengali Babu (and his Bibi) in the British satirical magazine, Punch, and its contemporary vernacular counterparts in colonial Bengal.

Making the 'Woman' : Discourses of Gender in 18th-19th century India, 2023

Routledge, 2021

Drawing on a host of primary sources in the UK and India, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of modern history, education, sociology and South Asian studies.

The Discourse of British and German Colonialism: Convergence and Competition, 2020

Routledge, 2020

Maping India: Transitions and Transformations 18th-19th Century, 2019

Routledge, 2020

Anthem Press, UK, 2017

About This Book ‘British Women Missionaries in Bengal, 1793-1861’ looks at the arrival of the ea... more About This Book

Routledge, 2020

Honore Champion, Paris, 2017

Cambridge Scholars Publishing, U.K., 2016

Mapping India: Transitions and Transformations, 18th-19th century, 2020

History of Education

Disciplined Subjects, 2020

The Discourse of British and German Colonialism, 2020

Social Change, 2022

South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2021

Disciplined Subjects, 2020

Teaching English Literature to an increasingly heterogeneous class is proving to be a major chall... more Teaching English Literature to an increasingly heterogeneous class is proving to be a major challenge in the recent years, especially with the emphasis on inclusive higher education in India. The differences in educational experiences and socio-cultural background, mean that both the learners and the teachers bring to the classroom certain ideas and expectations. A lack of awareness of the socio-cultural relevance of what is being taught, to whom, and how, might lead to miscommunication and frustration among the teachers and the learners. The communication gap that exists between the producers and the receivers of a text can be attributed primarily to linguistic differences and cultural gaps. Based on my personal experience of teaching Eng Lit to college and university students, I would like to address some critical questions: How to teach diverse learners in a complex culturally diverse setting? What are the general assumptions and preconceived notions with which the teacher comes ...

History of Education, 2021

Cases on Teacher Identity, Diversity, and Cognition in Higher Education

Teaching English Literature to an increasingly heterogeneous class is proving to be a major chall... more Teaching English Literature to an increasingly heterogeneous class is proving to be a major challenge in recent years, especially with the emphasis on inclusive higher education in India. The differences in educational experiences and socio-cultural background mean that both the learners and the teachers bring to the classroom certain ideas and expectations. A lack of awareness of the socio-cultural relevance of what is being taught, to whom, and how might lead to miscommunication and frustration among the teachers and the learners. The communication gap that exists between producers and receivers of a text can be attributed primarily to linguistic differences and cultural gaps. This chapter addresses some critical questions related to pedagogical interpretations and actions in the classroom: How to teach diverse learners in a complex culturally diverse setting? What challenges do teachers face in importing a foreign literature and how can they make this more relevant and meaningful...

Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 2021

Nilanjana Mukherjee’s book looks at construction of space, leading from imaginative to concrete c... more Nilanjana Mukherjee’s book looks at construction of space, leading from imaginative to concrete contours, within the context of the British imperial enterprise in India. Fundamental to her argument is that colonial definitions of sovereignty were defined in terms of control over space and not just over people, and hence it was first necessary to map the space and inscribe symbols into it. In the latter half of the eighteenth century, imperialism and colonization were complex phenomena that involved new and imminent strategies of nation building. No other period of British history, as Linda Colley has noted, has seen such a conscious attempt to construct a national state and national identity (Colley 1992). Although the physical occupation of India by the British East India Company could be said to have begun with the battle of Plassey (1757), nevertheless the process of conquest through mediation of symbolic forms indicate the time and manner in which the ‘conquest’ was conscripted

South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2021

The emergence of the bhadralok in the nineteenth century, typified by ‘genteel’ qualities and Wes... more The emergence of the bhadralok in the nineteenth century, typified by ‘genteel’ qualities and Western education, reflected changes in the nature of Bengali identity and subjectivity. The colonial experience resulted in an anxiety among elite Bengalis to define a social class for themselves that would delineate their gentility and shape a new code of ‘acceptability’. The ‘Babu’ came to be associated with this new class of Bengalis eager to adopt Western manners and learning who formed the greater part of the white-collar workers required in the cosmopolitan enclave of Calcutta. They were satirised, particularly in colonial discourse, for their imitation of English manners, attire and language. This article explores the shifting markers of gentility and the satiric representation of the Bengali Babu (and his Bibi) in the British satirical magazine, Punch, and its contemporary vernacular counterparts in colonial Bengal.

Rupkatha Journal, India, 2015

The paper studies an early Guide Book on India through the eyes of an Englishman - the The East I... more The paper studies an early Guide Book on India through the eyes of an Englishman - the The East India Vade Mecum of Captain Thomas Williamson written in 1810. Meant as a ‘Complete Guide to Gentlemen intended for the Civil, Military, or Naval Service of the Hon. East India Company’, this colonial archive is probably the first patient and meticulous noting down of minute aspects of life and people in India.

ESSE Journal, Albania, 2013

In spite of the phenomenal growth of Higher Education in India, there is still the worrying short... more In spite of the phenomenal growth of Higher Education in India, there is still the worrying shortage of qualified skilled workforce. The greatest problem that besets our educational system today is the complete lack of co relation between academic curriculum and the skills demanded by the Indian industries. The focus of the present academia is more traditional knowledge-based centric, with a step motherly attitude towards skill-based teaching. Keeping in mind the country’s economic development and the growing unemployability of ‘educated’ graduates, it is imperative that we connect ‘Skills’ with ‘Higher Education’ and make it a part of mainstream education.

Subaltern Speak – An International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 2012

The subject of my paper stems from a deep interest in trying to understand the various factors th... more The subject of my paper stems from a deep interest in trying to understand the various factors that shape or construct the concept of national identity among a given community of people or a country. A text is a powerful ideological representation, a cultural artefact that can reflect and also change the socio-political events of the time. It can refashion, remould and reenergize the thinking or activities of the people. That literature, be it any genre and in any time or place in history, has played a predominant role in shaping the ideas of a people regarding their identity cannot be denied. The epics, folktales and local myths all contribute in giving a sense of oneness to hitherto heterogeneous groups of people.
In India, history had always been handed down the generation in the form of oral and written literature. My interest in the past, especially the historical novels written in India in the late 19th and early 20th century, stems from a desire to see the mutually affecting relationship between a writer and the socio-political situation in which he writes, and also to assess how a seemingly harmless act of novel writing could become a potent and powerful means for the colonised to voice their dissent against the hegemonic powers.

Indian Historical Review, 2019

A Review of British Women Missionaries in Bengal, 1793–1861 by Swarupa Gupta First Published Sep... more A Review of British Women Missionaries in Bengal, 1793–1861 by Swarupa Gupta First Published September 2, 2019 Book Review
in Indian Historical Review (IHR)

Paper titled: 'The White Woman's Burden: Challenges for Early English Women Missionaries to Bengal'

Presented paper: ‘Colonization and Early Vernacular Dialogue Books’

Hosted by Manchester University & the John Rylands Library, for the British Society for Eighteent... more Hosted by Manchester University & the John Rylands Library,
for the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
8-12 September Manchester 2014
Topic: Eighteenth-Century Arts of Communication:
in manuscript, in print, in the arts, and in person

Presented paper ‘The Ephemeral Pride of a Nation: A Postcolonial Study of Gulliver’s Travels’ at ... more Presented paper ‘The Ephemeral Pride of a Nation: A Postcolonial Study of Gulliver’s Travels’ at the 67th Annual Convention of Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association (RMMLA), Vancouver, Washington, USA on October 10-12, 2013.

Presented Paper Subverting History, Narrativizing the Past, Reinventing Identity at 'Fragments o... more Presented Paper Subverting History, Narrativizing the Past, Reinventing Identity at 'Fragments of Time' - An Interdisciplinary Conference on Culture and Social Change. 16 October, 2013, Lancaster University

‘Construction of National Identity in Eighteenth century British Novels’ Paper presented at the I... more ‘Construction of National Identity in Eighteenth century British Novels’ Paper presented at the International Conference on British and American Studies: Nation, Nationality, Nationhood, held at Tirana, Albania, 2-4 May, 2013.

‘Indian Literature and Framing of Public debates in India on Modernization, Tradition, Women and ... more ‘Indian Literature and Framing of Public debates in India on Modernization, Tradition, Women and Abuse’ - Talk to the Cambridge Graduate University faculty and doctoral students, which was a part of Middle East Global Leader Immersion Intensive Summit at Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 24 January 2013.

‘New Parameters of Defining the Nation State’ - Paper presented at the International Conference ... more ‘New Parameters of Defining the Nation State’ - Paper presented at the International Conference on ‘Postcoloniality in Transition’ organized by The English and Foreign Languages University, Department of Commonwealth Literary Studies (EFLU), Hyderabad, India, held on 16-17 January 2013.