Eminent historian David Ludden to speak on Post-national History in South Asia

Professor David Ludden will speak about “Post-national history in South Asia: Imperial territorialism and the inequity of globalization” as part of the South Asia Colloquium Series.

September 7, 4:30pm • Room 202, Luce Hall, 34 Hillhouse Avenue

In his talk, Professor Ludden will develop the idea that historicizing the nation as a cultural community obscures the nation’s fierce communitarian claim to a specific territorial homeland, whose map provides a primordial icon. He will argue that national territorialism emerges from imperial histories around the world, clashing with national claims to oppose, supersede, and transcend empire. Like the United States, India acquired its territorial form by imperial expansion, and the historical reproduction and transformation of imperial forms of power and authority inside both proudly democratic national cultures help to explain patterns of gross inequity being aggravated by globalization today.    

David Ludden is Professor of Political Economy and Globalization in the Department of History at New York University. He received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Pennsylvania in 1978, where he served on faculty from 1981 until 2007. His four edited volumes, three monographs, and many articles and chapters have led him to his current focus on the historical reproduction and transformation of imperial inequity in globalization. A recent essay on the subject is “Spatial Inequity in National Territory: Remapping 1905 in Bengal and Assam,” Modern Asian Studies, 2011.

 Other work by Professor Ludden is available from:

 https://docs.google.com/folderview?id=0B_oaVpE8bamTMjczZmI0OTAtZmU2OC00ODkzLWIwZTItZmQ1MTBmZGE3MDgw&usp=drive_web&hl=en_US