Arts at W&M
[PAST EVENT] Annual Cloud Series Presents Susheila Nasta - The Bloomsbury Indians: Writing Across the Tracks
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The Bloomsbury Indians: Writing Across the Tracks
This lecture will explore the significant, but hitherto obscured, artistic networks and groupings of South Asian writers, public intellectuals, broadcasters, publishers, and political radicals who lived and worked in the environs of 'Bloomsbury' in London in the inter-war period. Reframing the parameters of orthodox literary histories as well as the cultural capital and geography of ‘Bloomsbury’ as powerful modernist icon, it illustrates how the presence of ‘India’ at the heart of empire anticipated a global vision of modernity, one situated both within and outside the European body. Diversifying the landscape and bringing to life the many stories of the Indian poets, novelists, editors, and critics who walked its streets, The Bloomsbury Indians forms part of a wider and lifelong cultural project to expand the angle of vision and highlight how Black and Asian writing has long been integral to the diverse formation of British literary culture.
Susheila Nasta MBE FRSL is Founding Editor of Wasafiri, the Magazine of International Contemporary Writing she launched in 1984 and edited till 2019. Educated in India, Holland, Germany, and Britain, she is currently Emerita Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literatures at Queen Mary University of London. Well-known as a pioneer in decolonising the curriculum, she has published widely, especially on women’s writing, the Caribbean, the South Asian diaspora, and black Britain. Her books include: Home Truths: Fictions of the South Asian Diaspora in Britain (2002), Writing Across Worlds: Contemporary Writers Talk (2004), India in Britain (2012), Asian Britain: A Photographic History (2013), Brave New Words: The Power of Writing Now (2019), and the co-editing of the first Cambridge history of Black and Asian British Writing (2020). She is currently completing, The Bloomsbury Indians, a group biography. Judge of a number of literary prizes, including the 2018 OGM Bocas Award for Caribbean Literature, the 2021 David Cohen Prize for a lifetime’s work and the 2022 Saif Ghobash Prize for Arab Literary Translation, she has led a number of major arts and humanities public engagement projects; in particular for over a decade, she led a major research team and curated several exhibitions on the contributions South Asians have made to Britain in the period 1850-1950. The exhibitions toured to eight Indian cities and displayed in the UK and Europe. Honoured with an MBE in 2011, in 2019 she received the Royal Society of Literature’s distinguished Benson Medal for her exceptional contribution to literature (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benson_Medal) In 2020 she was nominated Honorary Fellow of the English Association for her work in English Studies and remains literary executor of the major Caribbean and black British writer Sam Selvon.
Susheila Nasta MBE FRSL is Founding Editor of Wasafiri, the Magazine of International Contemporary Writing she launched in 1984 and edited till 2019. Educated in India, Holland, Germany, and Britain, she is currently Emerita Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literatures at Queen Mary University of London. Well-known as a pioneer in decolonising the curriculum, she has published widely, especially on women’s writing, the Caribbean, the South Asian diaspora, and black Britain. Her books include: Home Truths: Fictions of the South Asian Diaspora in Britain (2002), Writing Across Worlds: Contemporary Writers Talk (2004), India in Britain (2012), Asian Britain: A Photographic History (2013), Brave New Words: The Power of Writing Now (2019), and the co-editing of the first Cambridge history of Black and Asian British Writing (2020). She is currently completing, The Bloomsbury Indians, a group biography. Judge of a number of literary prizes, including the 2018 OGM Bocas Award for Caribbean Literature, the 2021 David Cohen Prize for a lifetime’s work and the 2022 Saif Ghobash Prize for Arab Literary Translation, she has led a number of major arts and humanities public engagement projects; in particular for over a decade, she led a major research team and curated several exhibitions on the contributions South Asians have made to Britain in the period 1850-1950. The exhibitions toured to eight Indian cities and displayed in the UK and Europe. Honoured with an MBE in 2011, in 2019 she received the Royal Society of Literature’s distinguished Benson Medal for her exceptional contribution to literature (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benson_Medal) In 2020 she was nominated Honorary Fellow of the English Association for her work in English Studies and remains literary executor of the major Caribbean and black British writer Sam Selvon.