Connecting Spaces

This book presents the first translation of travel writings and letters by Abala Bose, and examines an Indian woman's close observation and interrogation of social stereotypes as she toured India in colonial times and Europe, America and Japan at the height of British imperialism.

This book examines how nineteenth-century Bengal witnessed women writers like Krishnabhabini Devi, Prasanyamoyee Devi, Swarnakumari Devi and Abala Bose interrogated social stereotypes. It presents the first translation of travel writings and letters by Abala Bose, and examines an Indian woman's close observation as she toured India in colonial times and Europe, America and Japan at the height of British imperialism. Her travelogues in colonial India and imperial England relate to and interrogate the hegemonic role of Western ideologies and deconstruct stereotypes of women's travelogues, thus contributing to the female consciousness and tradition of women's writings.

The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of South Asian history, imperial and colonial history, and gender and women's studies.

Autorentext

Saptarshi Mallick is Assistant Professor at the Department of American Studies (Research Area for American Literary and Cultural History with a Focus on (Trans-) Nationality and Space), University of Graz, Austria. He is on lien from Sukanta Mahavidyalaya, Dhupguri, Jalpaiguri, University of North Bengal. He has been a Charles Wallace India Trust (doctoral) Fellow and an UK-IERI Fellow in the UK. He was an Ernst Mach Fellow (postdoctoral) at the Karl Franzens Universität Graz, Austria. Here, he has also been a visiting faculty in the Summer Semester of 2020. He has edited seven anthologies, among them most recently draka's Mr. cchakat. ik: A Reader (Birutjatio, 2022) and Finding Philosophers in Global Fiction: Redefining the Philosopher in Multicultural Contexts (Bloomsbury, 2024). He is an Associate Editor of Gitanjali and Beyond, an international, open access e-journal of the Scottish Centre of Tagore Studies (ScoTs), Edinburgh.

Inhalt

Introduction 1. Abala Bose's Travelogues 2. Preface to the Letters between Abala Bose and Rabindranath Tagore 3. Letters between Abala Bose and Rabindranath Tagore