About the Talk
How do we imagine and reconstruct the voices of devotees from times past through translation? How does religious significance and cultural emplacement affect the choices made by translators? How do translators work with philosophies and theologies that are not always translatable? How does historical context complicate or challenge presentist concerns for translating medieval or early modern texts/performance? This discussion brings together three scholar-translator-practitioners, to unravel and interrogate the process, complexity, and theory of translating devotion in South Asia.
About the Speaker
Dr Dipanjali Deka is a musician, scholar, and faculty in Global Arts at Krea University. She is a multilingual practitioner and researcher of Bhakti and Sufi musical traditions, and an All India Radio (AIR, Guwahati) artiste in Assamese Borgeet and Adhunik Geet. Dipanjali received her PhD from the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her research examines the living traditions of Bhakti devotional expression in South Asia through the lenses of performance studies, ethnomusicology, oral traditions, critical ethnography, and Indian aesthetic thought. She has also worked at the Archives and Research Center for Ethnomusicology (ARCE) , American Institute of Indian Studies.
Dr Manasvin Rajagopalan (he/they) holds a PhD in Comparative Literature, with a Designated Emphasis in the Study of Religion, from the University of California, Davis. Focusing on the premodern and early modern expressive cultures of South Asia and Western Europe– specifically France, he is interested in theatrical and multimodal performance history, criticism, and literary aesthetics. His research interests run the gamut of the interdisciplinary humanities, including art history, translation studies, food studies, performance studies, queer studies, religious studies, medical humanities, environmental humanities, and the social sciences. He is an Assistant Professor of Literature at Krea University.
Dr Prithvi Datta Chandra Shobhi is currently the Dean of the School of Interwoven Arts and Sciences, and Professor of History at Krea University. He is a social historian, literary critic and political commentator. He studied History and Literature at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and at the University of Chicago, from where he obtained a PhD. He was also a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Chicago, Visiting Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi, and was on the faculty of Humanities at the San Francisco State University. Most recently, he taught History at the Karnataka State Open University, Mysore. He has also worked with the American Institute of Indian Studies and Bangalore Central University.
The talk is mandatory for students of LITT 308 and LITT 348. All others are welcome!
