BRAC University Hosts Workshop on Historiography and Methodologies of the 1947 Partition
The Department of English and Humanities at Brac University recently organized a two-day workshop titled “Memoriscapes: Historiographies and Methodologies Around the 1947 Partition.” The event brought together distinguished scholars and researchers to discuss the history and methodologies surrounding the Partition of 1947.
This workshop was one of three collaborative sessions jointly organized by India’s National Institute of Technology Silchar, Brac University, and Lahore University of Management Sciences. It was part of the research project “Canonization of Partition Literature and the Politics of Memorialization in South Asia,” conducted under the Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration (SPARC) initiative by India’s Ministry of Education. The workshop was further supported by the Center for Migration Studies at the University of British Columbia’s Department of History and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
The inaugural session featured remarks from Dr. Debjani Sengupta of Indraprastha College for Women in New Delhi, Professor Anne Murphy from the University of British Columbia, Dr. Abhishek Roy from the National Institute of Technology Silchar, and Professor Firdous Azim from Brac University’s Department of English and Humanities.
The workshop comprised five panel discussions covering a wide range of topics, including literary representations of Partition, women’s roles, oral histories, and the use of digital media in documenting the era. The primary aim of the workshop was to explore new and creative methods for teaching Partition history in classrooms.
On the first day, Professor Pippa Virdee from De Montfort University delivered the keynote address, where she explored various methodologies for presenting the history of the subcontinent’s Partition. On the second day, Professor Saeed Ferdous from Bangladesh Open University presented his keynote, focusing on the challenges of highlighting the contributions of marginalized communities in Partition narratives.
