In today’s multi-media world, how are the histories of cultures captured, archived, and shared? Join us for an in-person conversation, moderated by Deepali Dewan, that takes a closer look at the use of different media to archive and unpack histories in South Asia and the diaspora. Joined by oral historian and author Aanchal Malhotra, and Brown History founder Ahsun Zafar, they explore how the ways in which different communities understand South Asian histories has changed over time.
This program is generously supported by the Dan Mishra South Asia Initiative.
Speakers:
Aanchal Malhotra
Aanchal Malhotra is an oral historian and author of the critically acclaimed non-fiction books, Remnants of Partition and In the Language of Remembering, which together trace the long-term, cross-border, generational impact of the 1947 Partition of India. Her latest work is a novel titled The Book of Everlasting Things, listed in NPR’s Best Books of 2022. Her work has won the Council for Museum Anthropology Book Award and been shortlisted for the British Academy Book Prize and Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar, among other honours. She is the co-founder of the Museum of Material Memory and lives in New Delhi.
Ahsun Zafar
In 2017, Ahsun Zafar set up Brown History – an educational archive of South Asian storytelling. Brown History soon gained a keen audience from others taking inspiration from Zafar’s efforts. The page now boasts over 700,000 followers and has solidified into a reputable public photo book, educational platform, and archive of postcolonial storytelling. Alongside daily posts on Instagram, Zafar now edits a regular newsletter that publishes submissions from his followers across the globe, runs a shop selling merchandise, and hosts his own podcast of interviews with authors and thinkers.
Deepali Dewan
Deepali Dewan is the Dan Mishra Curator of South Asian Art & Culture at ROM. She is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Art at the University of Toronto, is affiliated with the Centre for South Asian Studies, and is a Senior Associate Fellow at Massey College. Dr. Dewan is the co-editor of the online, peer-reviewed journal, Trans Asian Photography. Her research spans issues of colonial, modern, and contemporary visual culture, including topics such as art education, decorative arts, and historiography.
Recorded October 2, 2024