L-R: Dr Soumya Manjunath-Chavan, Dr. Jo Gill, Prof. Choodamani, Vivienne Fernandoe Project manager for University's India Office in Bangalore
Humanities abroad: the suburbs of Bangalore
The College’s Director of Education for English was invited in April to be key speaker at Jain University in India, for a symposium on the ‘Changing Suburban Culture of Bangalore’.
Doctor Jo Gill, who is Principal Investigator on the Leverhulme Trust funded Cultures of the Suburbs International Research Network, delivered a lecture which addressed many problems surrounding the definition of suburbs.
Doctor Jo Gill, who is Principal Investigator on the Leverhulme Trust funded Cultures of the Suburbs International Research Network, delivered a lecture in April which addressed many problems surrounding the definition of suburbs.
In addition to highlighting examples of suburbs of the United Kingdom and the United States, she discussed trends in northern India and questioned one of the commonly held assumptions that lower income groups move to the suburbs as they cannot afford adequate space in the city.
Dr. Gill’s excursion to Jain University was initiated following a visit from Professor Choodamani Nandagopal, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and Dr. Manjunath Chavan, Artist and Art Researcher and Head of the Department of Visual Arts from Jain University to the College of Humanities in December. During this, they delivered a lecture on ‘Exploring New Frontiers in Art History and Visual Culture' and met with many faculty members across the College to discuss ways by which the two institutions could work together.
Professor Choodamani was the other key speaker for the symposium, which was presided over by Mr. K R Ramakrishna, the Commissioner for the Ministry of Culture in the Government of Karnataka. The symposium focused on issues and questions surrounding the suburban growth in and around the city of Bangalore.
Doctor Gill commented on her experience, “As a new visitor to Bangalore, what struck me as I drove in from the international airport are the proposed new luxury and high-rise developments which, rather like in other growing cities such as Toronto, are planned for the peripheral land between the city centre (and its established suburbs) and the new global hub.”
The symposium was hosted by the Research Department of Cultural Studies within the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. The concept of the suburban culture of Bangalore city that emerged from this symposium is to be taken up as a fully-fledged major Research Project by the team of scholars from the Research Department of Cultural Studies, Jain University.
For more information about Dr. Gill’s research network please see the Cultures of the Suburbs website.
Date: 29 April 2013
