Gender and Cultural Identity in Colonial Orissa
Contents: Author's acknowledgements. Introduction. I. Gender: 1. Sisterhood in Colonial Orissa: search for identity through education. 2. Rebati and the woman question in Orissa. 3. The Virtuous Woman in the ideal home: female identity and the conduct book tradition in Orissa. 4. The burden of Shakti: female agency and literary creativity in Orissa. 5. Kuntala Kumari and Early Feminist Rhetoric in Orissa. 6. Region, female identity and border crossing: the case of Colonial Orissa. 7. Gender, public space and the act of translation: early women's writing in Orissa. 8. Sarala Devi and early literary feminism in Orissa. 9. Remapping stylistic boundaries: translating early Oriya Women's Literature. 10. Education and social reform in Colonial Orissa: the legacy of Sailabala Das. 11. Language dialectic and Fakir Mohan's Rhetoric of progress. 12. Ovid in Orissa: translation and cultural representation in Colonial India. 13. Autobiography as history: the case of Fakir Mohan. 14. English in Colonial Orissa: the missionary position. 15. Travel, railroad and the Southern imaginary: an early travel narrative in Eastern India. 16. Shakespeare in Orissa: culture, ideology and translation practice. Epilogue. Select bibliography. Index.
"In recent years, academic publishing has unveiled the colonial history and regional formations in India. Regrettably, Orissa remains an area of darkness. A volume that examines the nineteenth-century cultural history of Orissa from the postcolonial angle by drawing primarily from literary sources has been largely absent.
How is Orissa's identity defined during the Raj? This book focuses on issues such as feudalism and colonial modernity, language politics and the rhetoric of progress, westernization, nativity and border crossing. It brings the archive to centre stage and employs theoretical tools from the field of gender, translation and culture studies. We witness the intersections between memory and desire, colonial subjugations and postcolonial longings."
