Tejaswini Niranjana
Tejaswini Niranjana is Founding Director (2021-24), Centre for Inter-Asian Research, at Ahmedabad University. Before that, she was Professor and Head, Department of Cultural Studies, Lingnan University, Hong Kong, and Director, Centre for Cultural Research and Development. She is co-founder of the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore, which offered an innovative inter-disciplinary PhD programme from 2000-2012. During 2012-16, she headed the Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, and was Indian-language advisor to Wikipedia. Professor Niranjana is the author of Siting Translation: History, Post-structuralism and the Colonial Context (University of California Press, 1992), Mobilizing India: Women, Music and Migration between India and Trinidad (Duke UP, 2006), and Musicophilia in Mumbai: Performing Subjects and the Metropolitan Unconscious (Duke UP, 2020). Her most recent edited volumes include Genealogies of the Asian Present: Situating Inter-Asia Cultural Studies (Orient Blackswan, 2015) with Wang Xiaoming; and Music, Modernity and Publicness in India (Oxford University Press, 2020).
For her translations from Kannada into English, she has won the Central Sahitya Akademi Award, the Karnataka State Sahitya Akademi Award, and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. She won the 2021 National Translation Award for Prose for her English translation of the book No Presents Please: Mumbai Stories, an anthology of short stories in Kannada authored by Jayant Kaikini. The award is given by the American Literary Translators Association.
She is curator of the Saath-Saath Project, a musical collaboration between Indian and Chinese performers: http://saathsaathmusic.com, and producer of three documentary films based on her music research (directed by Surabhi Sharma).
For her translations from Kannada into English, she has won the Central Sahitya Akademi Award, the Karnataka State Sahitya Akademi Award, and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. She won the 2021 National Translation Award for Prose for her English translation of the book No Presents Please: Mumbai Stories, an anthology of short stories in Kannada authored by Jayant Kaikini. The award is given by the American Literary Translators Association.
She is curator of the Saath-Saath Project, a musical collaboration between Indian and Chinese performers: http://saathsaathmusic.com, and producer of three documentary films based on her music research (directed by Surabhi Sharma).
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Publication | Books by Tejaswini Niranjana
Source: Publisher
ISBN: 9780822338420, 0822338424
Page count: 271
Published: 12 October 2006
Format: Paperback
_____________________________________
ISBN: 9780822388425, 0822388421
Page count: 288
Published: 21 September 2006
Format: ebook
Scholars, administrators, and missionaries in colonial India translated the colonized people's literature in order to extend the bounds of the empire. Examining translations of Indian texts from the eighteenth century to the present, Niranjana urges post-colonial peoples to reconceive translation as a site for resistance and transformation.
Source: Publisher
Publication | Edited Volumes by Tejaswini Niranjana
Modernity fundamentally changed the relationship between private and public realms. New social arrangements gave rise to new forms of music making, with the musicians no longer performing exclusively in the princely courts or in the private homes of the wealthy. Not only did the act of listening to, and appreciating music became an important feature of public life in modern times, it also influenced how modernity itself took shape. Music became a key site for the articulation of questions of the public and of politics, and the essays in this volume look at various such aspects, from the formation of modern spaces of performance, certain forms of music assuming the status of classic, creation of a national and nationalistic tradition, and circulation of music in popular politics to broadcast technology. Through exploring these diverse inter-disciplinary questions relating to music, musicians, and their audiences, the volume provides new entry-points for the discussion of music and
modern-day cultural practice in India.
Source: Publisher
ISBN: 9780190121129, 0190121122
Page count: 272
Published: 2020
Format: Hardcover
Between 2006-14, an experiment was conducted in what came to be known as Integrated Science Education in several science institutions. It was initially driven by a variety of commonly-held assumptions for why science pedagogy needed interdisciplinary methods taken from the humanities - from those that argued for reality to be made complex, to those advocating local knowledge-systems and those asking scientists to become better citizens, better planners and administrators. Breaking the Silo compiles the experiments in pedagogy conducted by people from various disciplines in both the humanities and the sciences, all seeking to throw new light on the 'two cultures' theory that has beset India's science institutions.
Abstract
'Indian Culture' has inevitably meant in our Context the monuments of antiquity, the temple sculpture of a glorious past, the texts of ancient scriptures, all 'the wonder that was'-but if we were to recognize culture as comprising a variety of signifying practices, perhaps we would begin to make sense of the astonishing proliferation of seemingly disparate contemporary phenomena : Hindi cinema and its star system, the rath yatra and the demand for a temple at Ayodhya, the devotional fervour aroused by the Ramayana on television, Madonna and Michael Jackson in middle-class homes, the folklorization of 'rural India' for elite consumption. And not so insistently visible : The demands for regional autonomy; the growth of the women's movement; the Oalit struggles for the invention of alternate traditions, both cultural and political; the non-conventional left's attempts to consolidate a lower class/caste base; the questioning of the concept of 'secularism' from both right and left; or even the formation of 'modern' communal identities.
This collection brings together some of the most interesting work being done today by scholars writing on cultural practice in colonial and post-colonial India. Interdisciplinary and theoretically informed, these essays have, in their own specific ways, tried to come to terms with our modernity. They have done so by looking at cultural forms, formations, and institutions as practices that have 'impure' beginnings and heterogeneous articulations; and emphasize the materiality of cultural production and the relationships between society, culture and ideology. They deal with questions of culture and colonialism; nationalism and the contemporary world; constructions of the feminine; and the politics and aesthetics of language and translation. A variety of cultural forms-popular as well as elite, from commercial cinema to widow burning to high literature-are brought under close scrutiny.
Taken together they contribute to the elaboration of a politically sensitive mode of cultural analysis that will enable us to begin mapping the complex path of colonial pasts as they are transformed into post-colonial futures.
Publication | Articles in Books by Tejaswini Niranjana
Source: Publisher
ISBN: 9780822338420, 0822338424
Page count: 271
Published: 12 October 2006
Format: Paperback
_____________________________________
ISBN: 9780822388425, 0822388421
Page count: 288
Published: 21 September 2006
Format: ebook
Scholars, administrators, and missionaries in colonial India translated the colonized people's literature in order to extend the bounds of the empire. Examining translations of Indian texts from the eighteenth century to the present, Niranjana urges post-colonial peoples to reconceive translation as a site for resistance and transformation.
Source: Publisher
Modernity fundamentally changed the relationship between private and public realms. New social arrangements gave rise to new forms of music making, with the musicians no longer performing exclusively in the princely courts or in the private homes of the wealthy. Not only did the act of listening to, and appreciating music became an important feature of public life in modern times, it also influenced how modernity itself took shape. Music became a key site for the articulation of questions of the public and of politics, and the essays in this volume look at various such aspects, from the formation of modern spaces of performance, certain forms of music assuming the status of classic, creation of a national and nationalistic tradition, and circulation of music in popular politics to broadcast technology. Through exploring these diverse inter-disciplinary questions relating to music, musicians, and their audiences, the volume provides new entry-points for the discussion of music and
modern-day cultural practice in India.
Source: Publisher
ISBN: 9780190121129, 0190121122
Page count: 272
Published: 2020
Format: Hardcover
Between 2006-14, an experiment was conducted in what came to be known as Integrated Science Education in several science institutions. It was initially driven by a variety of commonly-held assumptions for why science pedagogy needed interdisciplinary methods taken from the humanities - from those that argued for reality to be made complex, to those advocating local knowledge-systems and those asking scientists to become better citizens, better planners and administrators. Breaking the Silo compiles the experiments in pedagogy conducted by people from various disciplines in both the humanities and the sciences, all seeking to throw new light on the 'two cultures' theory that has beset India's science institutions.
Abstract
'Indian Culture' has inevitably meant in our Context the monuments of antiquity, the temple sculpture of a glorious past, the texts of ancient scriptures, all 'the wonder that was'-but if we were to recognize culture as comprising a variety of signifying practices, perhaps we would begin to make sense of the astonishing proliferation of seemingly disparate contemporary phenomena : Hindi cinema and its star system, the rath yatra and the demand for a temple at Ayodhya, the devotional fervour aroused by the Ramayana on television, Madonna and Michael Jackson in middle-class homes, the folklorization of 'rural India' for elite consumption. And not so insistently visible : The demands for regional autonomy; the growth of the women's movement; the Oalit struggles for the invention of alternate traditions, both cultural and political; the non-conventional left's attempts to consolidate a lower class/caste base; the questioning of the concept of 'secularism' from both right and left; or even the formation of 'modern' communal identities.
This collection brings together some of the most interesting work being done today by scholars writing on cultural practice in colonial and post-colonial India. Interdisciplinary and theoretically informed, these essays have, in their own specific ways, tried to come to terms with our modernity. They have done so by looking at cultural forms, formations, and institutions as practices that have 'impure' beginnings and heterogeneous articulations; and emphasize the materiality of cultural production and the relationships between society, culture and ideology. They deal with questions of culture and colonialism; nationalism and the contemporary world; constructions of the feminine; and the politics and aesthetics of language and translation. A variety of cultural forms-popular as well as elite, from commercial cinema to widow burning to high literature-are brought under close scrutiny.
Taken together they contribute to the elaboration of a politically sensitive mode of cultural analysis that will enable us to begin mapping the complex path of colonial pasts as they are transformed into post-colonial futures.
English becomes a mark of status through a complex production of the
colonial subject within multiple discourses and on multiple sites. One such site" is translation. Translation as a practice shapes, and takes shape within, the asymmetrical relations of power that operate under colonialism. What is at stake here is the representation of the colonized, who need to be produced in such a manner as to justify colonial domination, and to beg for the English book by themselves.
The paper examines the social role of Hindustani music in the Dharwad-Hubli region, situating the music's early 20th century emergence and proliferation against and within the debates on language that were central to cultural transformation in that area. What was the problem of Kannada and more broadly the language question in the mid to late 19th and early 20th centuries? What might have been the role of vocal music in negotiating the language conflict? The paper suggests that Hindustani music is part of the cultural labour undertaken in the region during the rise of Kannada "nationalism". The phrase draws attention to the nature of the work involved in cultural practice and performance, and the nature of performers' activity, through teaching, singing, playing, evaluating and arguing about music. Cultural labour references a visible aspect of social transformation and social process, the latter to be seen as marked by elusive shifts in ways of living, thinking and creating. The formation of the taste for Hindustani sangeet in Dharwad is one result of such shifts.
the unique link between culture, the nation and women in Asian historical
contexts, which has made for a selective naming of feminism in particular as
Western and inauthentic, with consequences for the already difficult relationship between women and modernity. Such shared problematics across countries with different histories and political trajectories extend to questions of translation and contemporary shifts from prior conceptions of feminist politics. The last part of
the paper looks at the confluence of cultural studies and women’s studies in India, contrasting the rich legacies of women’s studies for cultural studies with more recent pedagogical challenges to feminism in the cultural studies classroom.
At issue in the paper as whole, therefore, is the debt that cultural studies owes to feminism in non-Western contexts.
This is not, however, a call for the formation of a separate branch of film studies but an attempt to take stock of interventions which have already been made, and pose some further questions to be addressed. I would like to make an attempt to list out the preoccupations of a few contemporary feminist writers, and to see if there are any commonalities among them. The four writers are Shohini Ghosh, Dulali Nag, Lalita Gopalan and Patricia Uberoi, and their essays cover popular cinema in Hindi, Telugu and Bengali. While Ghosh and Gopalan examine films from the 1980s and 90s, Uberoi talks about a film from the 60s and Nag about one from the 50s."
... Special thanks to Kirk Meighoo and Sheila Rampersad for our many thought-provoking conversations. ... 227 4. See Walter Rodney, A History of the Guyanese Working People, 18811905 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981) and KO Laurence, A Question ...
Source: Publisher
Original language- English
Title of host publication- Music, Modernity, and Publicness in India
Editors- Tejaswini NIRANJANA
Publisher- Oxford University Press
Chapter- 3
Pages: 64-88
ISBN (Electronic): 9780190990206
ISBN (Print): 9780190121129
Publication status- Published - Mar 2020
Original language: English
Title of host publication: Breaking the silo: integrated science education in India
Editors: Anup DHAR, Tejaswini NIRANJANA, K. SRIDHAR
Place of Publication: New Delhi
Publisher: Orient Blackswan
Chapter: 5
Pages: 97-113
Number of pages: 17
ISBN (Print): 9789386392886
Publication status: Published - 2017
Phir se samm pe aana strives to experience the space for Hindustani classical music in the city. The film revisits the sites clustered in and around Girgaon where music was taught and performed. It seeks to understand the musical legacy of this neighbourhood, even as it reimagines the documentary mode. This film ‘listens’ to architectural structures in an attempt to reflect on the deep history of this practice. In narrativising the love of music that took shape in this neighbourhood we also seek to experience ‘film time’ rather than evoke a time past or record the present. The film seeks repetition and cyclical time to imagine a narrative on music. Phir se…is an opportunity to experience an interior, almost intimate practice of the musical form.
This film emerged from a research project aimed at understanding Hindustani classical music as part of the intangible urban history of the metropolis of Bombay/Mumbai. The project is a collaboration between Dr. Tejaswini Niranjana and Surabhi Sharma. Through the research phase we produced a series of interviews that are available on the online archive, Pad.ma
Li, S.-L., Lau, K.-c., Dai, J., Niranjana, T., Wong, W.-c., Chan, K.-H., & Wang, X. (2006, May 26). Cultural studies in/and institutions: Panel 2 [Video podcast]. Retrieved from http://commons.ln.edu.hk/videos/581