Limits of Archives : Mapping Urban Spaces in Modern South Asia
On 31st January 2020, the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta hosted an international conference, Limits of Archives: Mapping Urban Spaces in Modern South Asia, with presentations by Garima Dhabhai (Presidency University), Kamalika Mukherjee (CSSSC), Laura A. Ring (University of Chicago), Priya Sangameswaran (CSSSC), Rajarshi Ghose (CSSSC), Sudeshna Banerjee (Jadavpur University), Tapan Paul (CSSSC), and Zaid Al Baset (St. Xavier’s College). The event also featured a round-table on the South Asia Materials Project and the South Asia Open Archives with Abhijit Bhattacharya (CSSSC), Ellen Ambrosone (Princeton University), Laura A. Ring (University of Chicago), and Mara Thacker (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) as speakers.
Designed as the first in a proposed series of outreach events by the CSSSC Archives, the participants drew on their historical and anthropological research on urban formations in South Asia such as Jaipur, Karachi, Kolkata, and Thane to reflect on how their respective projects have pushed the limits of urban studies and on the methodological challenges they have faced in seeking to understand cities and suburban formations. Presentations at the event showcased the work carried out at the CSSSC Archives in collaboration with the Endangered Archives Programme (https://eap.bl.uk/), British Library, London over the past twelve years and discussed how archival practices focused on urban spaces have sought to use new technologies and modalities of record-keeping to build new material infrastructure for archives, and to address the critical question of the ethical imperative.