Abstract: This talk discusses interventions in critical heritage practice at intersection with the creative visual and performing arts in representing Punjabi and Punjabi Canadian pasts. Canadian projects include an exhibition, held from September to December 2017, entitled "Trauma, Memory, and the Story of Canada," meant to complicate the commemoration of the 150 anniversary of the Confederation of Canada in 2017 through the difficult stories that both brought people to Canada, and have been experienced within Canada as a settler, colonial nation. A visual arts/film/performance project in India and Pakistan, Creative Interruptions, explores the possibility of commonality across the India/Pakistan border. Creative Interruptions culminated in an exhibition in Preet Nagar, Punjab, India in February 2019, with subsequent exhibitions planned for London, UK (June 2019) and Abbotsford and Vancouver, BC, Canada (2020) with works created on both sides of the border.
Speaker Bio: Anne Murphy is Associate Professor in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia and co-Director of the Centre for India and South Asia Research in the Institute of Asian Research. She is also Interim Associate Dean for Faculty and Program Development with the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for 2018-9. Dr. Murphy’s research interests focus on early modern and modern cultural representation in Punjab and within the Punjabi Diaspora, as well as more broadly in South Asia, with particular attention to the historical formation of religious communities and special but not exclusive attention to the Sikh tradition.
**Presented by the South Asian Studies Initiative in the Humanities Institute - Free and Open to the Public**
