Upcoming Sessions

Session 3: Constructing Modernities (Comparative Modernities Autumn Term Workshop Series 2024/25)

The Centre for Comparative Modernities is delighted to announce the final session in its 2024/25 Autumn term workshop series on 12 November 2024. Please note all sessions will be online on Zoom at 14:00 UK time. Please contact ccm@durham.ac.uk for the Zoom link or sign up to the centre's mailing list to receive the link directly: https://forms.gle/mhaQ7d7VQU7giu4E8

Surrealism from Paris to Shanghai 

Lauren Walden, Birmingham City University

Abstract 

This talk introduces the first book dedicated to introducing Chinese Surrealism, which utilises Chinese and French language primary sources to both further internationalise the movement and counter a scholarly bias towards Japanese surrealism, a nation that partially colonised China. Through historical contextualisation, I argue that Shanghai surrealism adopted a dialectical form, resonating with the modus operandi of the Parisian movement as well as China’s traditional belief system of Daoism. Reconciling the thought of Freud and Marx, Surrealism subsumed the multiple contradictions that divided Republican Shanghai, East and West, colonial and cosmopolitan, ancient and modern, navigating the porous boundaries that separate dream and reality. Unlike tight-knit surrealist groupings with a leader, I find that Shanghai Surrealism was a much more diffuse entity, disseminated across copious different periodicals, avant-garde groups, and the entire gamut of political ideology, ranging from Nationalist party supporters to Communist sympathizers. As such, through case studies of the Storm Society, Chinese Independent Art Association, Pang Xunqin, Lang Jingshan, Manhua (cartoon artists) as well as the periodical press, I show that the pervasive presence of Surrealism in Shanghai can be attributed to a wide range of factors: a yearning for national renewal, the stagnancy of the guohua genre, anticolonial protest, the rise of Western individualism, circumnavigating censorship and experimentation in search of a unique artistic voice.

Biography

Lauren Walden is a Research Fellow at Birmingham City University and a former Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in Contemporary Chinese Art. Her first book Le Surréalisme de Paris à Shanghai was published with the Giacometti Foundation in 2022. An expanded English edition will appear in October 2024 with Hong Kong University Press and she is currently working on her second monograph Surrealism and the People's Republic of China under contract with Routledge which is due to appear in 2025. Her PhD argued for Surrealist photography as a pivotal vector in the dissemination of non-European iconographies as diverse as Africa, Oceania, Latin America and China. She has been published in Visual Studies, Visual Resources, Visual Anthropology and the Revue Histoire de L’Art and she has previously held fellowships at the Henry Moore Foundation in Leeds and the Centre for Creative Photography in Arizona. 

Darwinism and Artificial Selection: Understanding Ecological Modernity of Post Darwinian era

Priyanka Guha Roy, Kazi Nazrul University (India)

Abstract

Darwin’s natural selection theory established that species (both plants and animals) achieve mutation from their parent species. Human selection or Artificial Selection also helps to multiply species as asserted by Darwin and his critics. Again, Lamarckian idea of ‘spontaneous generation or natural transition from non-living to living matter and simplest form of life that advanced gradually leading to the formation of human race, denounced the medieval concept that God created other species and humans whose social and biological progress was asserted by Robert Chambers and Herbert Spencer. This progress among other things, involved artificially selecting rare and valuable species as well. Thus human manipulation or implementations of artificiality became the order of the Renaissance and Baroque periods when truth regarding the humans and the natural world was sought. The period saw the development of biogeography as a promising field imbued with the task of ecological intelligence on species growth and geographical distribution leading to the development of a greater ecological manoeuvring during the phase of post-Darwinian ecological modernity. The environment turned racist to serve the notion of Bio-conquest phase of ill-imperialism, facilitating species transfer and exchanges. Plant importation was one such weapon that bio-conquest employed in British India in the late 19th and early 20th century spreading plant diseases from imported invasive pests, insects and fungi. Woolly Louse of the apple was caused by pests from American cotton plants imported into British India, Cotton stem weevil spread from Cambodia cotton. The present paper thus locates environment to understand Victorian modernity and clubs several historical flaps such as Artificial Selection, ecological Intelligence and plant transfer to understand a phase of environmental manoeuvring developing an inert environment that stopped communicating with the humans. That environment became predictable, calculable, and manipulable signifying a newer concept called, environmental modernity.

Biography

Dr. Priyanka Guha Roy is Assistant Professor and Head of History department at Kazi Nazrul University. She is also visiting faculty at Gaur Bango University. She works as an Academic Counsellor in Indira Gandhi National Open University. She is the Co-ordinator of the Value Added Course ’History of Science, Technology, Environment and Medicine’ sponsored by UGC and organized by the Department of History, Kazi Nazrul University. She is the principal investigator of the project Plant Pathology and Plant Diseases in Colonial India (1905-1947) funded by the INSA. She is specialized in Ecological history, Ecological Economic History, Economic History, and History Of Science, Colonial Forest History. Recently, she has published an edited book on “Empowering Women: Reflections and Trajectories”. Presently she is working on an edited volume on South Asian Colonial Ecology: Trends and Perspectives to be published by Routledge. A review of the book ‘India’s Forests Real and Imagined: Writing the Modern Nation’ by Alan Johnson has been reviewed and is to be published by White Horse Press.

Session 2: Ethnoreligious and Gender Modernities (Comparative Modernities Autumn Term Workshop Series 2024/25)

The Centre for Comparative Modernities is delighted to announce the second session in its 2024/25 Autumn term workshop series on 29 October 2024. Please note all sessions will be online on Zoom at 14:00 UK time. For access to the Zoom link please email ccm@durham.ac.uk or sign up to our mailing list: https://forms.gle/Yvdt467VweVmXVmX6 

Minoritarian Modernisms, Ethnic Abjections: Rum Theatre in 20th Century Istanbul

Christina Banalopoulou, University of Milan

Abstract: How do ethnic minorities use theatre to develop minoritarian modernisms that question the Eurocentric formulations of modernity? In what ways do the porous borders between artistic and everyday performances of minoritarian modernities both unsettle and reproduce hegemonic power relations? The theatre practices of the Rum minority in contemporary Turkey offer a great vantage point for approaching these questions. Combining multi-sited archival and ethnographic research, my essay will demonstrate that Rum minoritarian theatre provides non-dominant articulations of modernity that are particular to the community’s ethnolinguistic and religious diversity. In addition to their minoritarian particularity, these largely ignored theatrical processes of modernization can contribute significantly to theories of modernity that are both critical of the nation-state and the narratives that frame Greece as the cradle of modernity.

The Rum minority in Turkey comprises the Greek populations of the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman Empires. Their lives have long been defined by the conflicting and mutually constitutive Greek and Turkish nationalisms, and their political investments are not always fully aligned with either country. The community played a vital role in popularizing modern European theatre in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey in the early 20th century. As the ethnic-cleansing logics of the nationalist projects of Turkey and Greece continued to intensify, however, Rum minoritarian modernities—such as the work of the Filoi tis Texnis [Friends of the Art] theatre collective—were guided by the community’s efforts to resist the dominant processes of modernization that contributed to their ethnic abjection.

The growing literature on non-eurocentric theories of modernity seeks to decentralize the hegemony of western epistemological paradigms by mapping “multiple” and “alternative” modernisms. Despite these significant advances, however, the differentially conflicting tensions between multiple modernities remain relatively unexplored. By applying the concept of minoritarian modernisms, my essay will address the competing connotations of modernities from the perspective of ethnoreligious and linguistic diversity and abjection.

Biography: Christina Banalopoulou holds a PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies from the University of Maryland, College Park. She currently works as a visiting assistant professor in the project Archives of Abjection: Minoritarian Cultural Production in Turkey and Its Diasporas at the University of Milan. Christina’s primary areas of interest include minoritarian performance, feminist economics, and the intersections between the somatic and the political, with a focus on the Mediterranean. Her essays have been published or are forthcoming in peer-reviewed journals, including Theatre Research International, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, Rethinking Marxism, The Journal of Philosophical Economics, and Performance Philosophy.

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Modernities, Gender, and Material Culture Through the Lens of Homemaking Practices Among Mobile Working Men in Northern India

Devika Bahadur, De Montford University

Abstract: This research proposal explores the intersection of modernities, gender, and material culture through the lens of homemaking practices among mobile working men in northern India. By examining how these practices are influenced by internal migration and urbanization, this study contributes to our understanding of non-Western and transnational modernities, challenging conventional Western-centric paradigms.

The research addresses the following questions:

1. How do homemaking practices among mobile working men in northern India reflect evolving concepts of modernity and gender roles?
2. How do rural-urban migrations shape these practices, and how do they differ from traditional homemaking in their places of origin?
3. What role do material objects play in negotiating cultural identity and modernity for these mobile men in temporary urban accommodations?

Using archival research and ethnographic methods, this study will analyse historical documents, conduct interviews, and gather visual data from the early 20th century to the present day. The research will employ a combination of content analysis and semiotic analysis to interpret these materials, situating them within the broader context of India’s modernization and evolving notions of masculinity and domesticity.

By focusing on homemaking practices of mobile working men, this research offers a unique perspective on how non-Western communities engage with and reshape concepts of modernity. It challenges conventional understandings of modernization as a unidirectional process of Westernization by highlighting the complex interplay between traditional practices and modern influences in the domestic sphere of temporary urban accommodations.

This study contributes to the CCM’s goal of fostering interdisciplinary perspectives by bridging material culture studies, gender studies, and urban studies in the Indian context. It offers insights into how modernity is experienced, negotiated, and reimagined in the everyday lives of mobile working men, providing a nuanced understanding of the diverse trajectories of modernities beyond the Western-centric paradigm.

Biography: Devika is a PhD student in Cultural Studies where she explores the intersection between material culture and the notion of masculinity in India in contrast to European readings of home. Her understanding of “recreating a home away from home” has thematised and inspired her recent artworks as she has identified that the phenomenon of recreating home became apparent during the Covid-19 pandemic when people were often emotionally affected as they returned to remote workplaces, often away from their family homes.

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Past Sessions

Session 1: Technological and Ideological Modernities [15 October 2024]

The Centre for Comparative Modernities is delighted to announce the first session in its 2024/25 Autumn term workshop series. Please note all sessions will be online on Zoom at 14:00 UK time. Please email ccm@durham.ac.uk or sign up to our mailing list for the Zoom link: https://forms.gle/kVASbtByBA3eke4G9 

Counting In, Counting Out: Practical and Ideological Considerations in the 1865 Census of Shanghai Foreign Settlements

Qingrou Zhao, University of Edinburgh

Abstract: Two foreign extraterritorial jurisdictional enclaves (租界 zujie, “settlements”) occupied the north of Shanghai since the 1840s: the Britain-USA-dominated, semi-autonomous International Settlement and the French Concession governed by the French Consul. In 1865, Western civic leaders and administrators in the International Settlement initiated what they considered the first modern census of Shanghai, surveying both settlements and counting both foreign and Chinese residents. From then on, Shanghai settlements conducted censuses in roughly five-year intervals until they ceased to exist in the 1940s.

This paper studies the first settlement census in 1865 from an administrative perspective. It begins by exploring the prehistory of settlement census-making, explaining both census traditions in Imperial China and Europe, and population enumeration attempts by foreigners in Shanghai before 1865. Then, it analyses on the motivation and process of the 1865 census by examining council meeting minutes, comparing different versions of census forms, and looking at announcements in contemporary newspapers. The paper argues that although Western elites were keen to portray the “modern” aspects of the census, its modernity was not universally applied. When surveying the foreign community, census makers performatively highlighted all key elements of a modern census: inclusivity, individuality, regularity, publicity, and independence. However, the enumeration of the settlements’ Chinese community was still driven by financial and security concerns underpinning traditional population statistics, while foreigners in Shanghai believed that Chinese people lacked the necessary “characteristics” to answer to a modern census.

The paper comes from a PhD project investigating census-making processes by French, British-USA, Chinese, and Japanese authorities in Shanghai from the 1860s to 1949. It studies why and how censuses were conducted in different jurisdictions, how the "modern" census found its way into China, as well as the cooperation, emulation, and friction across empires in a trans-imperial laboratory.

Biography: Qingrou Zhao is a second-year history PhD student at the University of Edinburgh. Her research, fully funded by the ESRC studentship at the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science, studies census-making in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Shanghai foreign settlements. Before her PhD, Qingrou completed an MPhil in Economic and Social History at the University of Oxford with Distinction. Her Master’s thesis studied the 1882-1883 financial crisis in Shanghai in relation to the Self-Strengthening Movement. Her undergraduate studies were completed at Peking University, China.

Technical Modernity and Future Figurations in Nineteenth-Century Colombia

Daniel Hernández Quiñones, Catholic University of Eichstätt (Germany)

Abstract: In the last quarter of the 19th century, Colombia experienced two processes that seemed to move in opposite directions. The first was a modest but significant material modernization, evidenced by the construction of railways, small-scale steel plants, the promotion of steam navigation routes, and various infrastructure projects. The second was the shift from a radical liberal regime established in 1863 to a conservative, Catholic, and Hispanist regime known as La Regeneración in 1886, often labeled “anti-modern” by political historiography. Inspired by the contributions of historical semantics and the analysis of the conceptual repertoires employed by the involved actors, this presentation focuses on the meanings attributed to material modernity within the context of a political transition viewed by its supporters as a sign of spiritual maturity and by its critics as regressive in terms of liberties. Despite the ideological divides of the time, it is argued that this modernizing atmosphere was interpreted by both liberal and conservative voices as the prelude to a grand social contract intended to resolve 60 years of public disorder. On a deeper level, indicators of material modernity were integrated by various period observers into a Christian philosophy of history, portraying these technical advancements as a path to redemption within historical time, enabling the nation to achieve emancipation from economic servitude and destructive passions that perpetually led to war. The findings of this research, completed in 2023, are based on a diverse corpus of primary sources, including illustrated press, memoirs, travel accounts, and technical documentation related to infrastructure.

Biography: PhD Candidate in Latin American History at the Catholic University of Eichstätt. Historian and Master in Social Studies from the University of Rosario (Bogotá). His areas of interest include Visual Culture, Temporalities, and representations of technical modernity in Colombia and Latin America. Among his most recent publications is the book “The Prodigious Machine They Still Fail to Understand”: Technology, Early Industry, and Experiences of Time. Colombia 1880-1904.

Modernities in a Global Context Workshop Autumn Term Card