Noted postcolonial theorist Chakrabarty to present talk at ASU

Noted postcolonial theorist, subaltern scholar and Bengali historian Dipesh Chakrabarty will kick off ASU's Institute for Humanities Research Fellows’ Symposium March 28 on the Tempe campus.

His talk “Climate Change and the Historical Imagination,” scheduled for 4:30 p.m. in Wrigley Hall, room 101, will reflect on aspects of the “double consciousness,” which scientific claims of climate change give rise to around questions of risk and uncertainty, scales of human history, and anthropocentric habits of thought.

The symposium will continue from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. March 29, in West Hall room 135.

Chakrabarty is the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor in History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. He earned an undergraduate degree in physics and a master’s degree in business management before obtaining a doctorate in history from the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia.

He has been awarded a D.Litt degree by the University of London, United Kingdom, and an honorary doctorate by the University of Antwerp, Belgium. In 2011, his alma mater, Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, conferred on him a Distinguished Alumnus Award during its 50th anniversary commemorations.

Chakrabarty’s research has focused on modern South Asian history and historiography; subaltern, indigenous and minority histories; history in/and public life; theory and history; decolonization; and the effect of climate change on historical and political thinking. He is currently working on a book that focuses mainly on the Indian historian Sir Jadunath Sarkar and how the discipline of history found a home in colonial India. Chakrabarty is also engaged in writing a book on the impact of climate change on the historical imagination.

The IHR Research Fellows’ symposium theme this year is “Telling Imaginaries: Places, Histories and the Global.” The fellows, all from diverse disciplinary backgrounds, are examining the role of imagination in connecting human experience with memory, and consequently, in interpreting reality.

The event is co-sponsored by ASU’s Global Institute of Sustainability. For more information, visit http://ihr.asu.edu/news-events/news/telling-imaginaries-places-histories-and-global. To RSVP, please visit https://ihr.asu.edu/node/1179/register.