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Many consider the autobiography to be a Western genre that represents the self as fully autonomous. The contributors to Speaking of the Self challenge this presumption by examining a wide range of women’s autobiographical writing from South Asia. Expanding the definition of what kinds of writing can be considered autobiographical, the contributors analyze everything from poetry, songs, mystical experiences and diaries, to prose, fiction, architecture and ...
How far did gender ideologies translate into practice in the Indian colonial context? Rhetoric and Reality highlights the interconnections between 'the ideal' and 'the real' with regard to gender and the colonial experience in South Asia. Exploring interlinkages between received perspectives on gender and colonial and indigenous discourses on 'modernity', it underlines key issues related to domesticity, body, and modernity. Focusing on subjects like motherhood, ...
In 1870, Nawab Sikandar Begum of Bhopal became the First Muslim Woman to publish an account of her Hajj Pilgrimage to Mecca. She travelled with a retinue of a thousand, visited Jeddah and Mecca, performed the requisite rituals and observances, then returned to India and wrote her impressions of her visit. Sikandar Begum's critical and often surprising description provides unique insight into the factors that went into writing this quintessentially Muslim journey ...