This talk presents one genealogy for exploring how the city and the countryside were conceptualized in relation to one another in late colonial India. In particular, it will underscore the contribution urban professionals made to managing—and imagining—agrarian space. Rural change and the expert knowledge required to manage the countryside opened paths for urban concepts and categories to reshape agrarian space in a process that, among other things, gradually made the Indian village legible to town planners. In this way, rural space was made subject to an ensemble of institutional forms and practices grounded in emergent urban paradigms.

William Glover teaches modern South Asian history at the University of Michigan. His research interests include South Asian colonial and post-colonial urban and cultural history, social theory, and the material culture of built environments. He is the author of Making Lahore Modern: Constructing and Imagining a Colonial City (University of Minnesota Press, 2008; winner of the American Institute of Pakistan Studies Junior Book Award), and of several articles exploring the imbrication of built environments, knowledge cultures, and urban processes in South Asia.  Professor Glover is the former director of the University of Michigan's Center for South Asian Studies, and former associate director of the International Institute at the University of Michigan.

Presented in partnership with the Center for South Asian Studies. This event is part of the Thursday Series of the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. It is made possible by a generous contribution from Kenneth and Frances Aftel Eisenberg.