Date: 28th March 2025
Time: 9.30 p.m. IST/9.00 a.m. PT
Location: Zoom
Last Date to Register: 26th March 2025
Speaker Bio
Dr. Divya Kannan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Archaeology, Shiv Nadar-University Delhi-NCR. Her research interests are 19th and 20th South Asian history, History of Education, Childhood and Youth, Caste, Gender Studies, Social Movements, Empires and Colonial Violence, Christian missions, and Public and Oral Histories.
Abstract
The present-day ubiquity and legacy of Protestant-mission schools in the south Indian state of Kerala is no historical accident. Established in the 1800s by British and Swiss missionary societies, these schools were a fascinating microcosm of larger social and cultural conflicts, especially regarding the education of poor, lower-caste children. The interactions of these institutions with the state on one hand (British Malabar and the princely states of Travancore and Cochin) and existing caste and religious communities on the other, have both formed and been informed by normative ideas and contestations of what it means to be a school-going child in colonial Kerala. Located in the political context of empire and religion in South Asia, Contested Childhoods goes beyond a descriptive history of education to provide a conceptual history of childhood itself.
