Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies

Religion, India and the Long Eighteenth Century

One-day Interdisciplinary conference

to be held 10.00am - 5.00pm, on 6th February 2010 in K/122 at The King's Manor

"Chaun-Jatrah. Celebration of the Bath of Juggernaut"
by François Balthazar Solvyns printed in his "Les Hindoûs." 4 vols. Paris:
Chez L'Auteur, 1808-1812: pg. 384-385, Vol. I.

Speakers include: Michael J. Franklin (plenary address), Paul Barlow, Andrea Major and Daniel E. White (plenary address) .

Following the Seven Year’s War (1756-1763), Britain gained firmer control of its Indian colony, starting a period of colonial expansion which saw India become a vital economic, geopolitical and artistic centre for the period. The confluence of these factors led to a burgeoning interest in and study of Indian culture by British and Europeans alike – particularly around the subject of religion. In turn, this European learning fuelled a native Indian intelligentsia concerned with defining their own religious identity.

From Anquetil DuPerron’s translation of the Zend-Avesta into French (1771), Charles Wilkins’ translation of the Bhagvat-Geeta into English (1785) and William Carey’s translation of the Bible into Bengalese and Sanskrit (c. 1790s-1800s); to Sir William Jones’ nine ‘Hymns’ to Hindu deities (1785-1789), Robert Southey’s poem TheCurse of Kehama (1810) and Sydney Owenson’s novel The Missionary (1811); to the Vellore Mutiny (1806), the East India Company’s acquiescence of Christian missions (1813) and Raja Rammohan Ray’s founding of the Brahmo Samaj (1829), religion in India emerged as a critical political and literary topic of research, fascination, fear and controversy in the long eighteenth century.

This conference has been organised to bring together the innovative and important scholarship taking place on the subject of religion in India across the disciplines of English, History and Art History. It hopes to explore further religion and India ’s crucial roles in serving to shape, define and complicate the economic, geopolitical and aesthetic history of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Britain and India.

Postgraduate organiser: Kurt Johnson kaj502@york.ac.uk

Registration (includes lunch and coffee/tea): £15, or £12 for students and unwaged. Members of the University of York: free registration by emailing cmb14@york.ac.uk, , but please note that if you wish to have lunch there will be a payment of £5.00. Please could you try to register before 2nd February.

Download registration form: Word File or PDF file

Programme

10.00-10.30	Registration, coffee, tea
10.30-10.45	Opening remarks: Kurt Johnson (York)
10.45-11.30	Andrea Major (Leeds): 'Sati and Sensibility: Slavery, Empathy and the Pornography of Violence in Missionary depictions of Hinduism, 1793-1829'
11.30-11.40	Coffee, tea
11.40-12.40	Plenary Address: Michael J Franklin (Swansea): ‘The Sanskritic and the Syncretic: Sir William Jones on the Plurality and Pluralisms of India ’
12.40-13.30	Lunch
13.30-14.15	Ashok Malhotra ( Edinburgh ): ‘Longman, the Romantic Poets and India ’
14.15-14.20	BREAK
14.20-15.20	Plenary Address: Daniel E. White ( Toronto ): ‘Henry Derozio and Hindu Liberalism: Doubt and Disinheritance in "A Dramatic Sketch" (1830)’
15.20-15.30	Tea, coffee
15.30-16.15	Paul Barlow ( Northumbria ): ‘Visualising Indian faith: Problems of seeing and reading Indian religious imagery’
16.15-17.00	Alex Watson ( Huddersfield ): ‘Translating India: Geopolitical identity in Elizabeth Hamilton's paratexts for Translation of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah (1797)’
17.00	Conference ends