Returns Relating To Publications In The Bengali Language In 1857 To Which Is Added A List Of The Native Presses With The Books Printed At Each Their Price And Character With A Notice Of The Past Condition And Future Prospects Of The Vernacular Press Of Bengal And The Statistics Of The Bombay And Madras Vernacular Presses

Author : Priyasha Mukhopadhyay
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691261547
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (912 download)

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Download or read book Required Reading written by Priyasha Mukhopadhyay and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2024-08-20 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How ordinary forms of writing—including manuals, petitions, almanacs, and magazines—shaped the way colonial subjects understood their place in empire In Required Reading, Priyasha Mukhopadhyay offers a new and provocative history of reading that centers archives of everyday writing from the British empire. Mukhopadhyay rummages in the drawers of bureaucratic offices and the cupboards of publishers in search of how historical readers in colonial South Asia responded to texts ranging from licenses to manuals, how they made sense of them, and what this can tell us about their experiences living in the shadow of a vast imperial power. Taking these engagements seriously, she argues, is the first step to challenging conventional notions of what it means to read. Mukhopadhyay’s account is populated by a cast of characters that spans the ranks of colonial society, from bored soldiers to frustrated bureaucrats. These readers formed close, even intimate relationships with everyday texts. She presents four case studies: a soldier’s manual, a cache of bureaucratic documents, a collection of astrological almanacs, and a women’s literary magazine. Tracking moments in which readers refused to read, were unable to read, and read in part, she uncovers the dizzying array of material, textual, and aural practices these texts elicited. Even selectively read almanacs and impenetrable account books, she finds, were springboards for personal, world-shaping readerly relationships. Untethered from the constraints of conventional literacy, Required Reading reimagines how texts work in the world and how we understand the very idea of reading.