Seema Sohi, Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, explores the early decades of the 20th century, when Indian migrants across North America organized a broad, innovative, and heterogeneous anticolonial movement that, according to British authorities, came dangerously close to toppling the British Raj during the First World War. Though their anticolonial politics began as a two-pronged effort to both contest anti-Indian racism in North America and challenge British colonialism at home, they ultimately charted radical visions of freedom that looked beyond the narrow horizon of western liberal democracies for emancipatory possibilities and, in the process, exposed the racialized assumptions and hollow rhetoric of U.S. and British liberalism and modernity. These forms of anticolonial politics provoked a global inter-imperial collaboration between U.S. and British officials to repress anticolonial revolt, in part, through the exclusion and repression of Indians in North America. Indian exclusion, therefore, must be understood not only as part of the broader historical narrative of anti-Asian immigration bans in the 19th and 20th centuries, but also as part of a history of radical repression. This presentation tracks U.S. and British surveillance and repression of Indian anticolonialists who were maligned as both racially and politically objectionable and whose political activism, Sohi argues, contributed to the rise of the American security state. Seema Sohi completed her Ph.D. from the University of Washington in U.S. history, with a focus on Asian American history. Her work examines the radical anticolonial politics of South Asian intellectuals and migrant workers based in North America during the early twentieth century as well as the inter-imperial efforts of the U.S. and British states to repress them. A history of radicalism and antiradicalism, this project also looks at the racial formations of South Asians through the lens of antiradicalism during the early years of South Asian migration to the United States. She teaches various courses in the Ethnic Studies Department including the Introduction to Asian American Studies, Asian/Pacific American Communities, Race and Citizenship, and South Asian American History. The lecture will be presented in conjunction with the exhibit Beyond Bollywood: Indian Americans Shape the Nation, created by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service. The Mathers Museum’s presentation of the exhibit and related programming has been generously funded by Indiana University alumnus Robert N. Johnson, the Madhusudan and Kiran C. Dhar India Studies Program, the Asian American Studies Program, and the Department of American Studies. The event will be free and open to the public.
Free visitor parking is available by the Indiana Avenue lobby entrance. Metered parking is available at the McCalla School parking lot on the corner of Ninth Street and Indiana Avenue. The parking lot also has spaces designated for Indiana University C and ST permits. During the weekends free parking is available on the surrounding streets. An access ramp is located at the Fess Avenue entrance, on the corner of Ninth Street and Fess Avenue. Reserved parking spaces are available on Ninth Street, between Fess Avenue and Indiana Avenue. If you have a disability and need assistance, special arrangements can be made to accommodate most needs. Please call 812-855-6873.
Cost: Free
For more information contact:
Mathers Museum of World Cultures
(812) 855-1696
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