When:
Monday, October 12, 2020 12:00 PM
-
1:30 PM
Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs
South Asia Center presents
Mathangi Subramanian and Maura Finkelstein
Secret Stories of the City: Bangalore and Bombay in Conversation
Cities - particularly mega-cities like Bangalore and Bombay
- contain identities, profiles, and stories that circulate through official,
public channels. But both cities, like all cities, have hidden worlds, unseen
corners, and marginalized residents whose stories are devalued or erased
because they do not map onto accepted narratives of space and demographics.
This conversation between Mathangi Subramanian and Maura Finkelstein will
discuss how ethnographic storytelling can challenge accepted narratives by
highlighting legitimized and marginalized voices, both through fiction and
nonfiction. Drawing on Subramanian’s novel A People’s History of Heaven and
Finkelstein’s ethnography, The Archive of Loss: Lively Ruination in Mill Land
Mumbai, this conversation will ask: how can ethnography be used as a tool for
recovery and visibility? Whose stories get told and whose remain hidden? How do
writers choose what stories to tell and why? How can we think beyond the
imagined bounds of these Indian cities - and, by extension, cities around the
globe - through ethnographic storytelling?
Mathangi Subramanian is an award winning South Asian
American author and educator who believes stories have the power to change the
world. Her novel A People’s History of Heaven was longlisted for the
PEN/Faulkner Award and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and was a
finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and the Valley of Words Prize. Her
middle grades novel Dear Mrs. Naidu won the South Asia Book Award and
was shortlisted for the Hindu-Goodbooks prize. A former public school teacher,
Fulbright-Nehru Scholar, and senior policy analyst for the New York City
Council, she holds a doctorate in education from Columbia University Teachers
College.
Maura Finkelstein a cultural anthropologist,
ethnographer and writer, as well as an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at
Muhlenberg College, in Allentown, PA. I have an MA in anthropology from
Columbia University (2005) and a PhD in anthropology from Stanford University
(2012). Her first book, The Archive of Loss: Lively Ruination in Mill Land
Mumbai, was published with Due University Press in 2019.
Click here to register
For more information or to request accessibility arrangements, please contact Emera Bridger Wilson (elbridge@syr.edu).