The Romance of Revolution: literature, gender and anticolonial militancy in colonial India.

<strong>Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Advanced Study </strong> second in the series of Fellows' Seminars 2016 <strong>on 8th February 2016</strong> by <strong>Ania Loomba</strong> Catherine Bryson Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia on <strong>The Romance of Revolution: literature, gender and anticolonial militancy in colonial India.</strong> <strong>Abstract:</strong> This talk is drawn from my forthcoming book which explores how progressive and communist women shaped a new political subject in India, contesting and appropriating Gandhian, liberal-feminist, and European left-wing models of womanhood. In this paper I discuss the gendered mores of the revolutionary nationalists in Bengal, juxtaposing the lives and writings of women such as Kalpana Dutt, Pritilata Waddedar, Bina Das, and Kamla Das with representations of them in influential novels of the time.