This seminar was organised with ArtsLab Cross-College Theme, Heritage, Urban Studies, and Development.

Speakers:

  • Dr Michael Rapport (University of Glasgow) - Close-quarters Living, Tuberculosis and Urban Renewal in Belle Époque Paris
  • Dr Bishnupriya Basak (University of Calcutta) - Kumartuli – the Making of Heritage, Art and Public in an Indian Cityscape
  • Professor Samir Kumar Das (University of Calcutta) - Pandemic and Pratimashilpa: Negotiating Heritage in Times of Crisis

 

Abstracts:

Close-quarters living, tuberculosis and urban renewal in Belle Époque Paris

Dr Michael Rapport, University of Glasgow

Public authorities in Paris around 1900 sought to control the spread of tuberculosis through urban renewal in the îlots insalubres, ‘unsanitary blocks’, areas characterised by crowded and deteriorating environments. Dr Rapport’s paper looks at the different influences at work among policymakers, especially medical theories, urbanist ideas and political culture, investigating public responses to the proposals, which struck at long-standing communities, social ties and economic livelihoods. He reconstructs a historical model of the dilemma posed between urban renewal on grounds of public health and the survival of neighbourhoods that were inextricably enmeshed with the urban fabric of Paris.

Dr Michael Rapport is Reader in Modern European History, University of Glasgow. He is currently completing a book on Europe from the fall of Napoleon in 1815 to the Revolutions of 1848 (for Palgrave) and editing the Oxford Handbook to Europe in the Long Nineteenth Century.

Pandemic and Pratimashilpa: Negotiating Heritage in Times of Crisis

Professor Samir Kumar Das, University of Calcutta

This presentation seeks to understand the nature of the crisis faced by the Dugapuja heritage of Kolkata at the time of the present pandemic. It also focuses on the idol-makers of Kumartuli – the world’s largest potters’ hub, how they negotiate the crisis and are called upon to reconcile diverse, if not rivalling, imperatives of iconography, of aesthetics and public tastes, of finance, life and livelihood and finally of the public safety acts, rules, verdicts and advisories legislated and issued from time to time by different layers of court and government.

Dr Samir Kumar DAS is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Institute of Foreign Policy Studies, University of Calcutta. He is also the Honorary Director of Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group (CRG) – one of India’s leading think tanks. His jointly edited book The Making of Durga: Art, Heritage and the Public is going to be published soon from Springer.       

Kumartuli: the making of heritage, art and public in an Indian cityscape

Dr Bishnupriya Basak, University of Calcutta

Kumartuli is a unique idol-makers’ colony located in the urban cosmopolis of Kolkata dedicated to the making of clay idols of deities, predominantly that of the goddess Durga. The goddess becomes the pivot of an autumnal religious festival which engages and engulfs Bengali communities across the world, transcending to a social and cultural event of a grand scale. Our book (ed. Samir Kumar Das and Bishnupriya Basak), due to be published by Springer Nature, has its principal focus on the idol-makers (pratimasilpi) and seeks to situate them at the interface of Heritage, Art and Public. Informed by Critical Heritage Studies we argue for a notion of Heritage as a contingent process in the present that aims to dislodge the Heritage-in-crisis model which treats Heritage as a sum total of inert, static traits. We are intent on showing how the idol-makers, embodying an age-old tradition, navigate through the changing conditions, at times also contributing to the making of these conditions. Thus, we challenge any frame of analysis that views them as hapless victims caught in a crisis. This central argument runs through the collection of nine chapters written by experts from diverse fields of Art History, Archaeology, History, Political Science and Sociology. My presentation will be centred on this work.

Dr Bishnupriya Basak is an Associate Professor in the Department of Archaeology, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India. Her specialisation is in Bengal prehistory but she also researches extensively on archaeological theory, historiographical issues in Indian archaeology and heritage studies, with many papers in nationally and internationally peer-reviewed journals.

Watch a live recording of this event > Passcode: nR^9ALr7

First published: 3 March 2022

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