Victorian Empire, Race, & Disability
Virtual Roundtable
October 4, 2024
10am PDT | 12pm CDT | 1pm EDT | 6pm BST
This roundtable brings together five scholars–ranging in career stage from graduate student, assistant professor, and associate professor–whose research lies at the intersection of Victorian Studies, colonial and postcolonial studies, environmental humanities, critical race theory, and disability studies. Drawing on a range of archives, the short talks examine how the British empire relied upon concepts of race and disability that were mutually constitutive and deeply entangled, mobilizing them in an increasingly eugenic and biopolitical world. Focusing on diverse geographies of the British Empire—and beyond, in the case of California—these talks make urgent interventions in theorizing disability, labor, capital, and the environment in a transimperial frame.
Speakers
Anjuli Fatima Raza Kolb (Dartmouth)
Chair
Bassam Sidiki (U of Texas, Austin)
“Opium, Parsis, and a Mental Asylum in Colonial Sindh”
Chandrica Barua (U of Michigan)
“Race, Caste, and Energy in Colonial Assam’s Tea Plantations”
Zarena Aslami (Michigan State U)
“Marx, Brontë, and the Production of Intellectual Disability”
Tom Parkinson (U Cambridge)
“Fixing the Deaf in British Bengal”
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