Amusement and Affect in Post/Colonial India

Ashmita Mukherjee (Ph.D. Candidate, Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, UConn)

with a response by Peter Constantine (Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, UConn)

Wednesday September 17, 2025, 3:30pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.

Register to attend virtually

Can resistance be fun? Doctoral researcher Ashmita Mukherjee argues for a new approach to understanding anti-colonial resistance in South Asia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Rather than focusing solely on traditional political and military histories, she examines the power of literary amusement and its emotive impact. She defines amusement as a transient, light, bright, and sparkling emotion that, despite its fleeting nature, has proven to be an enduring method of exposition, critique, subversion, and community building.

Her work is guided by the affective turn in literary studies, drawing on the methodologies of scholars like Rita Felski and Sara Ahmed as well as concepts from classical Indian aesthetics, particularly “rasa theory”, to uncover how shared pleasure could create a sense of collective identity. She uses examples from several genres, including editorial articles and longer works by British, Anglo-Indian, and Indian-origin writers spanning a century up to Indian independence from British rule. Editorial satire, science writing and speculative fiction, children’s literature, and amusing sketches illustrate how printed texts expressed the complex emotional landscape of a nation in the making, and became a fundamental part of shaping national consciousness.

Ashmita Mukherjee is a doctoral researcher in Comparative Literature at the University of Connecticut. Her dissertation, “Textual Pleasures: Amusement and Affect in Post/Colonial India (1850-1950),” examines the role of literary amusement as a tool for anti-colonial resistance. She is interested in global 19th-20th century, theories of emotion and affect, South Asian Studies, world literature and culture, public humanities, and digital media. She has published articles in Literature/Film Quarterly and South Asian Review, and is a creator and co-host at the YouTube channel @theantilibrarypodcast.

Peter Constantine is professor of translation studies and director of the program in literary translation in the Department of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages at the University of Connecticut. He is the publisher of World Poetry Books and the literary magazine World Poetry Review. His translations include works by Rousseau, Machiavelli, Gogol and Tolstoy for Random House, Modern Library. He co-edited A Century of Greek Poetry: 1900–2000, and the anthology The Greek Poets: Homer to the Present, which W.W. Norton published in 2010. He is a Guggenheim Fellow, a recipient of two NEAs, and was awarded the PEN Translation Prize for Six Early Stories by Thomas Mann and the National Translation Award for The Undiscovered Chekhov. His translation of the complete works of Isaac Babel received the Koret Jewish Literature Award and a National Jewish Book Award citation.

Access note

If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057. We can request ASL interpretation, computer-assisted real time transcription, and other accommodations offered by the Center for Students with Disabilities. Requests should be made at least five business days in advance whenever possible

The Inward Turn and the Vices of Political (Dis)engagement

Ahmed AboHamad (Ph.D. Candidate, Philosophy, UConn)

with a response by Julia Smachylo (Landscape Architecture, UConn)

Wednesday September 10, 2025, 3:30pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)

The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.

Register to attend virtually

Quietism and extremism may appear to occupy opposite ends of the political engagement spectrum, yet I argue that they share more in common than one might initially assume. They can spring from the same philosophical ground and be facilitated through turning inward: embracing philosophies which maintain that individuals already possess within themselves all that is necessary for Happiness. Sufism offers a particularly instructive case study. In this talk, I critique the romanticization of Sufism by U.S. think tanks, foreign policy actors, and authoritarian regimes, which rests on the essentialist assumption that Sufism counters extremism and promotes peace. Such political instrumentalization of Sufism is troubling because it overlooks how the asceticism and emotional detachment associated with turning inward can either foster passivity toward unjust power or serve as enabling conditions for violent extremism.

Ahmed AboHamad is a Ph.D. candidate in Philosophy at the University of Connecticut, where he also earned his M.A. in Philosophy and completed graduate certificates in Human Rights and in Intersectional Indigeneity, Race, Ethnicity, and Politics (IIREP). Prior to joining UConn, he graduated summa cum laude with honors from Connecticut College, majoring in Biological Sciences and Philosophy. His areas of interest include Political Philosophy, Ethics, the History of Philosophy, and Moral Psychology.

Julia Smachylo is a Canadian urban designer and planner, and an Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Connecticut. Julia’s research is grounded in critical urban and landscape theory, political ecology and media studies, and traces the rise of neoliberal forms of natural resource management that have set in motion larger aggregate impacts bearing direct relation to environmental conservation, ecological design, and the organization of cities. Working across disciplines, her research connects urban landscapes with multi-scalar processes of environmental stewardship, with the goal of contributing to ongoing efforts to generate more holistic and socially responsible approaches to planning and design intervention.

Access note

If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057. We can request ASL interpretation, computer-assisted real time transcription, and other accommodations offered by the Center for Students with Disabilities. Requests should be made at least five business days in advance whenever possible