Prof. Pramod K Nayar’s new book, India and Imperial Vulnerability: Knowledge, Aesthetics and Subjects in British Discourses of Disaster, 1763-1939, has released from Manchester University Press in its prestigious series, Studies in Imperialism.
Prof. Pramod K Nayar
This book is a study of famines, earthquakes and cyclones in British India. It moves from the aesthetics of representation through the knowledge cultures that emerged around disasters and, finally, the construction of the categories of the helpless native and the labouring Englishman. It reads documents as diverse as the British government’s Famine Commission Reports, eyewitness accounts, commentaries, instruction manuals and other such unusual materials in order to unpack the many-layered writings on disaster which then informed imperial discourse itself.
More information at https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526178114/
Pramod K Nayar is Senior Professor in the Department of English, where he also holds the UNESCO Chair in Vulnerability Studies. Among his other works on the British Empire are: The Raj: A Journey Through Ten Documents (Bloomsbury 2023), Indian Travel Writing in the Age of Empire, 1830-1940 (Bloomsbury, 2020), The British Raj: Keywords. (Routledge. 2017), Colonial Voices: The Discourses of Empire (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), English Writing and India, 1600-1920: Colonizing Aesthetics. (Routledge. 2008) besides edited collections such as From Discovery to the Civilisational Mission: English Writings on India ( 6 volumes, Bloomsbury, 2022), Women in Colonial India: Historical Documents and Sources (5 volumes. Routledge 2013). Colonial Education and India. (5 volumes. Routledge. 2019) , Indian Travel Writing, 1830-1947 (5 volumes. Routledge. 2017), The Penguin 1857 Reader (Penguin. 2007), and others.
He is Distinguished Professor, Department of Liberal Arts, IIT Hyderabad, and winner of the Visitor’s Award for Best Research in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, from the Hon’ble President of India, 2018. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and of the English Association.