Convenors:
Dr Debjani Ganguly, HRC, ANU. E: debjani.ganguly@anu.edu.au
Professor Dipesh Chakrabarty, HRC, HRC. E: dipesh.chakrabarty@anu.edu.au
Dr Assa Doron, Anthropology, ANU. E: assa.doron@anu.edu.au

This symposium commemorates the 30th anniversary of the path breaking postcolonial history project, the Subaltern Studies. It originated at ANU in 1981 with the publication of the first volume under the general editorship of Ranajit Guha, then based at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. The editorial team comprised, among others, historians such as Partha Chatterjee, Dipesh Chakrabarty. Shahid Amin, Gyan Pandey and David Hardiman.

In this symposium we explore the multiple genealogies and legacies of Subaltern Studies – Marxist, poststructuralist, postcolonial. The genealogical exercise will focus especially on India and Australia (where Guha was based) and see if debates in peasant, Aboriginal, Dalit, and feminist histories of the 1970s and 80s provided a general context for the emergence of Subaltern Studies. But we will also ask if Subaltern Studies continues to retain its innovative force as an interdisciplinary rubric in today’s globalised world where emergent and global forms of subalternity – refugees, asylum seekers, illegal migrant - may call for new modes of analyses.

Topics to be explored include:

* Genealogies and Transformations
* The Local and the Global
* Australian Connections
* Subaltern Studies today