Murdoch University
The Krishna Somers Foundation presents the year’s second event, a lecture by Professor Martina Ghosh-Schellhorn,
currently a Visiting Fellow in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.
As usual excellent wine (and orange juice) will be available.
When: Monday March 12 4.30 PM
Where: Education and Humanities 3.041
Title:
Political Autobiography in a Transitional World
Autobiography continues to attract a steady amount of critical attention, while the self-narratives of prominent figures in the political field never fail to fascinate myriads of readers. One of the reasons for this might be that, unlike fiction, autobiography as a genre tends to overtly authenticate its own truth-claims by emphasising its contiguity with the personal memories of an actual person in the shape of the autobiographer. More than in any other sub-genre of autobiography, in political autobiography this suturing of the ‘personal’ and the ‘public’ becomes, likewise, problematized. It is precisely here, one can argue, that the intersection of autobiographical and collective memory is to be found. The intriguing developments deriving from this intermeshing form the focus of my discussion of political autobiography on the basis of examples from India (Jawaharlal Nehru, and Princess Sunity Devi) and South Africa (Nelson Mandela, and Ellen Kuzwayo).
The initiator of TransculturalAnglophoneStudies (TAS), Martina Ghosh-Schellhorn is Professor of New English Literatures and Cultures, Saarland University, Germany. She has taught British Cultural Studies, New English Literatures, and British Literature at several European universities and has frequented South Africa, and India, her former home, as Visiting Professor. She is currently exploring the various parameters of transculturality in the context of India and its diaspora(s), as, discernible in computer-mediated communication; popular culture, in particular cinema; socio-cultural norms, with an emphasis on religious practice, self-representation and life-narratives. Besides developing pedagogic material for the institutional dissemination of TAS, she is creating an internet-mediated information databases for all levels of TAS research, and moreover for classroom teaching. As of 2006, she is the coordinator of the Europe-Aid funded project "Transcultura", a cooperation between Saarland University and partners in France, India, China and Mali. Her major publications include Anthony Burgess: A Study in Character (1986), Writing Women Across Borders and Categories (ed., 2000),Peripheral Centres, Central Peripheries: Anglophone India and its Diasporas (ed., 2005), Steep Stairs To Myself: Transitionality and Autobiography (forthcoming 2007), and Playing By The Rules of the Game (co-ed. with R. Marti, forthcoming 2007).
