Harpur College Dean’s Workshop on Science Studies is sponsoring a lecture on the technologies of railroad construction in 19th century colonial India, on Monday, Dec. 8.
The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will take place in the Fernand Braudel Center, Academic Building A, room 330 at 4:30 p.m.
“The workshop involves an issue in the history of science that one of the participants in the workshop has proposed,” Gerald Kutcher, coordinator of the dean’s workshop, said.
“It’s a workshop in which individuals in different areas of science studies present areas of interest,” he said.
Binghamton University Sociology Graduate Student Vandana Swami proposed this year’s workshop.
The workshop is entitled “Re-Ordering Landscape: Spatial Technologies of Railroad Construction in 19th Century Colonial India.”
Swami will explore the reasons the British introduced the railroads in India in 1853.
“Railroads have been treated as one of the greatest agents of ‘progress’ that brought ‘civilization’ and ‘development’ to India in most of the influential existing historical discourses and paradigms,” Swami explained.
The lecture will discuss the dominant frameworks and show the numerous legacies that railroads have caused.
“My talk will show how the railroads … spatially entrench[ed] themselves in the social geography of colonial western India,” she said. “I will show how the railroads had a series of dynamic impacts upon the land, space and people of India that need to be brought out and discussed.”