🌏 Indian Modernisms in a Global Frame

Until the 1990s, modernism was considered mainly a Euro-American movement with distinctive literary features that was at its peak during the 1910–1940 period, and was displaced by postmodernism after the end of WWII. However, the recent “global turn” in modernist studies has led to a fundamental reconfiguration of the spatiotemporal boundaries, chronologies, and hierarchical relations of modernism, bringing non-Western and postcolonial regions into its ambit for the first time. In this talk, Professor Dharwadker draws on her recent book, “Cosmo-Modernism and Theater in India: Writing and Staging Multilingual Modernisms” (Columbia University Press, 2025) to discuss why Indian-language modernisms in literature and theatre still appear on the margins of the new modernist studies, and how the theory and practice of this vital post-independence movement can be successfully retrieved.

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For questions or accessibility accommodations, contact Professor Aparna Dharwadker at adharwadker@wisc.edu.