Papers by Divya Kannan
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D. Gerster and F. Jensz (eds.), Global Perspectives on Boarding Schools in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Palgrave Studies in the History of Childhood, 2022
Boarding schools occupied only a small fraction of the institutional and educational landscape of... more Boarding schools occupied only a small fraction of the institutional and educational landscape of nineteenth and early twentieth-century India. Despite their numerically low presence, these boarding schools, established by the British colonial administration, reformist associations, and various European Christian missionary groups, have transitioned into some of India's foremost educational institutions today. Their histories are a relevant entry point to explore further the complex entanglements between various groups in 'contact zones', marked by conflicting notions of caste, race, gender, religion, and pedagogy. In short, these schools were experiments in refashioning childhood identities and reimagining conceptions of self and community to a considerable extent. By itself, the term 'boarding school' conjures images of isolated and walled institutions with highly monitored routines and disciplinary
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Children's Geographies, 2022
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Divya Kannon, Report on the Inauguration of the Branch Office of the Max Weber Foundation, New Delhi
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South Asian History and Culture, 2019
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Journal of Childhood Studies
This roundtable session initially took place as part of the international conference “Childhood, ... more This roundtable session initially took place as part of the international conference “Childhood, Youth, and Identity in South Asia,” organized by the Department of History, Shiv Nadar University, Greater Noida, and the Centre for Publishing, Ambedkar University Delhi, India, on January 6–7, 2020.
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Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 2022
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Children's Geographies, 2022
This paper examines the spatial and temporal dimensions of varied
schooling agendas for poor and ... more This paper examines the spatial and temporal dimensions of varied
schooling agendas for poor and oppressed caste children and adults in
the princely state of Travancore in nineteenth-century colonial south
India. Schools became socially contested and politically charged spaces
in which various subaltern castes, particularly the Dalits and Nadars,
articulated a new language of social and religious self-fashioning. British
Protestant missionaries played a crucial role in provoking these
imaginations and yet, the joint workings of caste and racial prejudices
resulted in ambivalent cultural encounters in the educational landscape.
Caste was central to these contestations and negotiations in making
modern child subjectivities and tended to produce new forms of
inequality and reproduce existing ones. I argue that schooling
campaigns for the poor resulted in the perpetuation of hierarchised,
caste-inflected norms of childhood and produced multiple marginal
children in local society. This paper draws upon British Protestant
missionary archives to highlight the unstable and violent geographies
in which children of subaltern castes navigated the sphere of modern
schooling in colonial Travancore and the constitutive function of
schools in the making of marginal childhoods.
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Journal of Childhood Studies, 2022
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Economic and Political Weekly, Aug 3, 2013
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The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, 2021
Missionary literature for young British readers in the nineteenth century drew upon on a hierarch... more Missionary literature for young British readers in the nineteenth century drew upon on a hierarchy of colonial childhoods premised on racial differentiation in India. But in the colonial field, these colluded with existing dominant caste biases perpetuated through violent means.
This article argues that the interplay of caste and philanthropy in juvenile missionary periodicals highlights the complicated nature of missionary reform for poor children in India. The multiple Otherings of low-caste children destabilized missionary notions of sentimentalized childhood even as periodical literature represented them as objects of pity. These children were not "voiceless victims," but their lived realities impinged on missionary practices and literary representations. This article explores these entangled colonial encounters, which reshaped ideas of colonial childhoods and philanthropy through the periodical literature and the work of the Coral Fund-supported schools in colonial south India.
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An online article on the community library movement and Afghan refugee children in New Delhi.
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A response piece on the Sabarimala entry issue in 2013
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Online article. Published in the DailyO, September 2018
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A commentary on the problems plaguing the NET examination in India.
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The Protestant London Missionary Society schools in south Travancore marked the advent of organis... more The Protestant London Missionary Society schools in south Travancore marked the advent of organised female schooling, for marginalised labouring groups but found their agendas meshed with emerging discourses on rights, ´progress´ and ´self-improvement', echoing larger, imperialist projects and notions of Victorian morality. Female boarding schools were established as part of a missionary strategy to forge new identities for convert children and orphans. They were sought to be educated into 'useful women' premised on Christian values of femininity, habits and patterns of work that would mark this transition. However, the schools also became sites of negotiation, resistance and domination. This ruptured the missionary ideas of ´civilization’ and had multiple effects on the social history of the region. By analysing the workings of these boarding establishments, the author seeks to understand the politics and limits of missionary educational provision.
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Book Reviews by Divya Kannan
Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 2022
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Economic and Political Weekly, 2020
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Papers by Divya Kannan
schooling agendas for poor and oppressed caste children and adults in
the princely state of Travancore in nineteenth-century colonial south
India. Schools became socially contested and politically charged spaces
in which various subaltern castes, particularly the Dalits and Nadars,
articulated a new language of social and religious self-fashioning. British
Protestant missionaries played a crucial role in provoking these
imaginations and yet, the joint workings of caste and racial prejudices
resulted in ambivalent cultural encounters in the educational landscape.
Caste was central to these contestations and negotiations in making
modern child subjectivities and tended to produce new forms of
inequality and reproduce existing ones. I argue that schooling
campaigns for the poor resulted in the perpetuation of hierarchised,
caste-inflected norms of childhood and produced multiple marginal
children in local society. This paper draws upon British Protestant
missionary archives to highlight the unstable and violent geographies
in which children of subaltern castes navigated the sphere of modern
schooling in colonial Travancore and the constitutive function of
schools in the making of marginal childhoods.
This article argues that the interplay of caste and philanthropy in juvenile missionary periodicals highlights the complicated nature of missionary reform for poor children in India. The multiple Otherings of low-caste children destabilized missionary notions of sentimentalized childhood even as periodical literature represented them as objects of pity. These children were not "voiceless victims," but their lived realities impinged on missionary practices and literary representations. This article explores these entangled colonial encounters, which reshaped ideas of colonial childhoods and philanthropy through the periodical literature and the work of the Coral Fund-supported schools in colonial south India.
Book Reviews by Divya Kannan
schooling agendas for poor and oppressed caste children and adults in
the princely state of Travancore in nineteenth-century colonial south
India. Schools became socially contested and politically charged spaces
in which various subaltern castes, particularly the Dalits and Nadars,
articulated a new language of social and religious self-fashioning. British
Protestant missionaries played a crucial role in provoking these
imaginations and yet, the joint workings of caste and racial prejudices
resulted in ambivalent cultural encounters in the educational landscape.
Caste was central to these contestations and negotiations in making
modern child subjectivities and tended to produce new forms of
inequality and reproduce existing ones. I argue that schooling
campaigns for the poor resulted in the perpetuation of hierarchised,
caste-inflected norms of childhood and produced multiple marginal
children in local society. This paper draws upon British Protestant
missionary archives to highlight the unstable and violent geographies
in which children of subaltern castes navigated the sphere of modern
schooling in colonial Travancore and the constitutive function of
schools in the making of marginal childhoods.
This article argues that the interplay of caste and philanthropy in juvenile missionary periodicals highlights the complicated nature of missionary reform for poor children in India. The multiple Otherings of low-caste children destabilized missionary notions of sentimentalized childhood even as periodical literature represented them as objects of pity. These children were not "voiceless victims," but their lived realities impinged on missionary practices and literary representations. This article explores these entangled colonial encounters, which reshaped ideas of colonial childhoods and philanthropy through the periodical literature and the work of the Coral Fund-supported schools in colonial south India.