Shivangini Tandon – författare

The book examines the representation of women, their agency and subjectivity and gender relations in 18th- and 19th-century India. The chapters in the volume interrogate notions and discourses of ‘women’ and ‘gender’ during the period, historically shaped by multiple and even competing actors, practices and institutions. They highlight the ‘making of the woman’ across a wide spectrum of subject areas, regions and roles and attempt to understand the contradictions and differences in social experiences and identity formations of women. The volume also deals with prevalent notions of masculinity and femininity, normative and non-conformist expressions of gender and sexual identity and epistemological concerns of gender, especially in its intersectional interplay with other axes of caste, class, race, region and empire.

Presenting unique understandings of our gendered pasts, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of history, gender studies and South Asian studies.

The book examines the representation of women, their agency and subjectivity and gender relations in 18th- and 19th-century India. The chapters in the volume interrogate notions and discourses of ‘women’ and ‘gender’ during the period, historically shaped by multiple and even competing actors, practices and institutions. They highlight the ‘making of the woman’ across a wide spectrum of subject areas, regions and roles and attempt to understand the contradictions and differences in social experiences and identity formations of women. The volume also deals with prevalent notions of masculinity and femininity, normative and non-conformist expressions of gender and sexual identity and epistemological concerns of gender, especially in its intersectional interplay with other axes of caste, class, race, region and empire.

Presenting unique understandings of our gendered pasts, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of history, gender studies and South Asian studies.

Situated at the intersections between history and literature, the book explores the life-stories written in the Mughal period to recover socio-cultural developments in the period. It focuses on the genre of life-stories and looks at the complex interactions between agency and the ruling structure in shaping historical formations.

The biographical dictionaries explored in this book highlight the significance of the agency of political actors, and the strategies through which the aristocrats and the elites reproduced the political system. At the same time, these texts are also quite helpful in recovering processes through which the ordinary people, in routine, everyday forms negotiated with and contested the political system. Delving into the life-narratives preserved in the tazkiras or biographical compendia, this book looks at the household as a political formation and positions the aristocratic households as integral to the reproduction of imperial sovereignty. The work also delves into the world of emotions and argues for the need to draw linkages between political developments and shifts in emotions and affect.

This book will be an essential resource for scholars and researchers of history especially early modern history, cultural studies, literature, sociology, South Asian history. It will also be of interest to those studying gender and political discourse in early modern South Asia.