Abstract
Bagchi argues that our conceptualization of the transnational in educational history is enriched by examining the multicentric histories and educational trajectories of Toru Dutt. She analyzes the transnational educational history of Dutt’s life as writer-in-the-making. A teenage prodigy who produced an astonishingly varied and rich corpus in a life that spanned India and Europe, before dying at the age of twenty-one, Dutt created a transnational literary and cultural space for her own work. Bagchi demonstrates that, using a feminist lens, we can recognize the character and enriching quality of such transnational female friendships and networks. While Dutt can be situated in the concepts of imperial as well as critical and vernacular cosmopolitanism, cosmopolitanisms need to be seen as important in our conceptualization of the transnational.
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Notes
- 1.
Harihar Das, Life and Letters of Toru Dutt (London: H. Milford, 1921).
- 2.
Eckhardt Fuchs and Eugenia Roldan Vera, “The Concept of the Transnational” (Paper, Workshop on the Concept of the Transnational in Educational History, University of Istanbul, June 23, 2015).
- 3.
Eckhardt Fuchs, “History of Education: Beyond the Nation?” in Connecting Histories of Education Transnational and Cross-Cultural Exchanges in (Post)Colonial Education, ed. Barnita Bagchi, Eckhardt Fuchs, and Kate Rousmaniere (New York: Berghahn, 2014), 11–26.
- 4.
Elleke Boehmer, “Global and Textual Webs in an Age of Transnational Capitalism; or, What Isn’t New about Empire,” Postcolonial Studies 7, no. 1 (2004): 11–26, accessed March 31, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1080/1368879042000210586.
- 5.
Barnita Bagchi, Eckhardt Fuchs, and Kate Rousmaniere, “Introduction,” in Connecting Histories of Education: Transnational and Cross-Cultural Exchanges in (Post)Colonial Education, ed. Barnita Bagchi, Eckhardt Fuchs, and Kate Rousmaniere (New York: Berghahn, 2014), 5–6.
- 6.
See, for example, Meera Kosambi, “Women’s Education through Women’s Eyes: Literary Articulations in Colonial Western India,” in Connecting Histories of Education: Transnational and Cross-Cultural Exchanges in (Post)Colonial Education, ed. Barnita Bagchi, Eckhardt Fuchs, and Kate Rousmaniere (New York: Berghahn, 2014), 193–212.
- 7.
Das, Life and Letters of Toru Dutt, 7.
- 8.
Govin C. Dutt, The Dutt Family Album (London: Longman, Greens and Co., 1870).
- 9.
Toru Dutt and Aru Dutt, A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields (Bhowanipore, Calcutta: Saptahik Sambad Press, 1876).
- 10.
Das, Life and Letters of Toru Dutt, 21.
- 11.
Ibid., 39.
- 12.
Ibid., 24.
- 13.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh (London: J. Miller, 1856).
- 14.
Letter dated March 13, 1876, in: Das, Life and Letters of Toru Dutt, 131–132.
- 15.
Letter dated June 26, 1876, in: Das, Life and Letters of Toru Dutt, 168–169.
- 16.
Clarisse Bader, La femme dans l’Inde antique: Etudes, morales, et littéraires (Paris: Didier, 1867).
- 17.
Geeti Sen, Feminine Fables: Imaging the Indian Woman in Painting, Photography, and Cinema (Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishing, 2002), 60.
- 18.
Toru Dutt and Aru Dutt, A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields.
- 19.
Toru Dutt, Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan (London: Kegan Paul, 1882).
- 20.
Toru Dutt, Le Journal de Mademoiselle D’Arvers (Paris: Didier, 1879).
- 21.
Toru Dutt, “Bianca, or, the Young Spanish Maiden,” Bengal Magazine 6 (1878): 264–381.
- 22.
Toru Dutt, Collected Prose and Poetry, ed. and intro. Chandani Lokugé (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006), 114.
- 23.
Ibid.
- 24.
N. Kamala, “Toru Dutt: Ecrivaine francophile et francophone,” Synergies Inde 4 (2009): 109, accessed March 31, 2017, https://gerflint.fr/Base/Inde4/kamala.pdf.
- 25.
Dutt, Le Journal, 226.
- 26.
Immanuel Kant, “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose,” in Political Writings, ed. Hans S. Reiss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 41–53; Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace (New York: Cosmo Books, 2005).
- 27.
Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007); Martha Nussbaum, “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism,” Boston Review 19, no. 5 (1994), accessed March 31, 2017, http://bostonreview.net/BR19.5/nussbaum.html.
- 28.
James Clifford, “Traveling Cultures,” in Cultural Studies, ed. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula Treichler (London: Routledge, 1992), 96–112; Bruce Robbins, “Comparative Cosmopolitanism,” Social Text 31–32 (1992): 169–186.
- 29.
Pnina Werbner, “Vernacular Cosmopolitanism,” Theory, Culture and Society 23, nos. 2–3 (2006): 496–498; Pnina Werbner, Anthropology and the New Cosmopolitanism: Rooted, Feminist and Vernacular Perspectives (New York: Berg, 2008).
- 30.
Joyce Goodman, “Gender, Cosmopolitanism, and Transnational Space and Time: Kasuya Yoshi and Girls’ Secondary Education,” History of Education 44, no. 6 (2015): 683–699, accessed March 31, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1080/0046760x.2015.1076066. As well as Goodman’s article in this volume.
- 31.
Werbner, “Vernacular Cosmopolitanism,” 496.
- 32.
Das, Life and Letters of Toru Dutt, vii.
- 33.
Barnita Bagchi, “Towards Ladyland: Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain and the Movement for Women’s Education in Bengal, c. 1900–c. 1932,” Paedagogica Historica 45, no. 2 (2009): 743–755, accessed March 31, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1080/00309230903335652.
- 34.
Das, Life and Letters of Toru Dutt, viii.
- 35.
Yojana Sharma, “Surge in Growth of Indian Students Studying Abroad,” University World News 416, June 1, 2016, accessed March 31, 2017, http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20160601180527213.
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Goodman, Joyce. “Gender, Cosmopolitanism, and Transnational Space and Time: Kasuya Yoshi and Girls’ Secondary Education.” History of Education 44, no. 6 (2015): 683–699. Accessed March 31, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1080/0046760x.2015.1076066.
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Werbner, Pnina. Anthropology and the New Cosmopolitanism: Rooted, Feminist and Vernacular Perspectives. New York: Berg, 2008.
Werbner, Pnina. “Vernacular Cosmopolitanism.” Theory, Culture and Society 23, nos. 2–3 (2006): 496–498.
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Bagchi, B. (2019). Analyzing Toru Dutt’s Oeuvre Today: How a Transnational Literary-Educational Case from Colonial India Can Enrich Our Conception of Transnational History. In: Fuchs, E., Roldán Vera, E. (eds) The Transnational in the History of Education. Global Histories of Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17168-1_7
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