The UCSC Center for South Asian Studies presents Transacting Empire: Family Portraits with Zirwat Chowdhury on April 17th. Participants are invited to attend in person at HUM 1 room 210 or register via Zoom.

This talk traces across the disjointed pairing of two portraits an imperial form of kinship that emerged among covenanted servants of the East India Company in eighteenth-century Bengal. Noting the portraits’ departures from prevailing conventions in British family portraiture, the talk examines the overlapping “joint-stock” formations of domesticity and commercial partnership through which the Hastings-Hancock household accumulated and remitted its colonial wealth.

Zirwat Chowdhury is Assistant Professor of 18th- and 19th-Century European Art at UCLA. Her research explores the interconnected histories of art, visual culture, and aesthetic philosophy in 18th-century Britain, France, South Asia and the Atlantic World.

Co-sponsored by The Center for Cultural Studies and The Humanities Institute. This event is a part of The Center for South Asian Studies’ annual lecture series, Crossings and The Center for Cultural Studies’ Wednesday colloquium series.

The Center for Cultural Studies hosts a weekly Wednesday colloquium featuring work by faculty and visitors. We gather at 12:00 PM, with presentations beginning at 12:15 PM. Staff assistance is provided by The Humanities Institute.