Fwd: Reminder: [Talk] Contempora​ry Studies: Presents a Public lecture on "The Tanjore Enlightenment, 1798-1832" ..., by Dr. Savithri Preetha Nair, Thursday, 16th June 2011, 4pm

[sharada srinivasan]

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From: Contemporary Studies IISc <ccs....@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 12:56 PM
Subject: Reminder: [Talk] Contempora​ry Studies: Presents a Public lecture on "The Tanjore Enlightenment, 1798-1832" ..., by Dr. Savithri Preetha Nair, Thursday, 16th June 2011, 4pm
To: Raghavendra Gadagkar <ra...@ces.iisc.ernet.in>
Cc: ccs....@gmail.com

Dear All,

 
CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY STUDIES
URL: http://ces.iisc.ernet.in/hpg/ragh/ccs

 
Invites you to a public lecture on "The Tanjore Enlightenment, 1798-1832"

Speaker:
Dr. Savithri Preetha Nair,

Visiting Fellow,

CCS, Bangalore - 560012. 

 

Date & Time:  Thursday , 16th June 4:00 p.m

Venue: CCS Seminar Hall, IISc, Bangalore 12.

(Note: We have shifted to the former JNCASR, near the Health Centre)

 

All are cordially invited
Tea/Coffee will be served at 3:30 p.m.

 

The enlightenment project was far from monolithic and Europe was hardly its limit. By their links to global networks at least a few Indian elites came under the impact of European intellectual developments at the turn of the nineteenth century, generating a revolutionary intellectual ferment, the specificities of which have not yet been wholly acknowledged or critically examined by historians of modernity, whose focus has predominantly been the European metropolis or its peripheries. Mapping the geographical location and circulation of enlightenment ideas, objects and knowledge over and across space is crucial to an understanding of 'how the Enlightenment was made and what, actually it was'. This lecture series aims to contribute to a greater understanding of enlightenment on the colonial "periphery" by examining the cross-cultural encounters at the Tanjore Court in South India
under the reign of Raja Serfoji II (1798-1832) in the fields of medicine, natural history,
experimental philosophy and music.

 

Lecture 1: Making Sense of the Human Body: Study of Anatomy at the Tanjore

Court (1798-1832).

 

Abstract: One of the chief subjects of study in the age of the enlightenment was anatomy. Artists and surgeons collaborated to produce multi-layered descriptions and naturalistic images of the human body. In the eighteenth century, the human body had been transformed into a new and discrete object thanks to a "dissecting gaze " that enveloped not just the outer body but also the insides. The clinical examination of the body under the grid of an "anatomical atlas" rendered the body objective, material and above all "real". Western medicine in the early nineteenth century stressed the importance of clinical observation and post-mortems and for this reason was rationalised as scientific and objective in contrast to the practice of Indian physicians who disregarded this aspect. In this context, the historiographical significance of Serfoji's study of anatomy, "the vile"aspect of Western medicine, as early as 1805, with the help of skeletons, prepared bodies, coloured plates and surgical instruments, acquired through European friends and commercial agents, is immense and demands serious attention.

 

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Raghavendra GADAGKAR, PhD, FASc, FNA, FNASc, FTWAS, Foreign Assoc NAS USA
INSA SN Bose Research Professor & JC Bose National Fellow
Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science
Bangalore, 560012, India.
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Chairman, Centre for Contemporary Studies, IISc, Bangalore
Hon. Prof., Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research
Non-resident Permanent Fellow, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin
Hon. Prof., Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata
Chairman, Research Council for History of Science, Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi
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Telephone (O): 91-80-23601429; 22932340; (R): 91-80-23601758
Fax: 91-80-23602121; 23601428
E-mail: ra...@ces.iisc.ernet.in
URL: http://ces.iisc.ernet.in/hpg/ragh
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Centre for Contemporary Studies
Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore - 560012.

(Near Health Centre).
Phone: 91-80-2360 6559, 2293 2486
Chair: Prof. Raghavendra Gadagkar

email: ccs....@gmail.com

URL: ces.iisc.ernet.in/hpg/ragh/ccs