Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) is often considered the most important literary figure in modern Bengali history. He lived through the transformation of Bengali culture and society from colonial to anticolonial to post-colonial times. Tagore was a playwright, novelist, philosopher, and songwriter. He wrote and composed nearly 2,500 songs, called Rabindrasangeet. My interlocutors ascribe Tagore’s songs with a particular affective strength that has become a medium for the construction of diasporic identity. In this dissertation, I explore the lives of three generations of women – from precolonial Bengal, post-independence Bengal, and the modern diaspora – and the types of movement they have experienced. I identify a rupture between the familiar and the immediate that accompanies their movement, and characterize this rupture as creating space for multiple identities, reflections, and intimacies, and the continuous building, dismantling, and rebuilding of culture. I argue that the genre of Rabindrasangeet forms and reforms in the diaspora through embodied processes of micro-level performance. Through friendships, kinships, inter-generational relationships, and technologically mediated connections, Rabindrasangeet remains present. It is a tool for self-making, and used to convey unspoken feelings in a gendered world.

This thesis focuses on the identity of middle class Bengali Muslim women of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Historians identify bhadramahilā as members of the social class bhadralok and also use bhadramahilā as an analytic category. I use several authors’ work in order to show that there are two important but differing ideas about who the bhadramahilā were. The most common view is that bhadramahilā were upper caste Hindus who became the new class of English educated Bengalis via the introduction of the British education system. Others suggest that Muslims are also members of this class group, but either 1) do not include them in their studies on bhadralok or 2) have not proven that Muslims were in fact bhadramahilā. The question is, Should we consider middle class Muslim women to be bhadramahilā? Or, does the category bhadramahilā apply to Muslims? After examining women’s writings and the historical, economic, and socio-cultural conditions of the period, I suggest that Muslim women were indeed among the bhadramahilā, and that the category is a useful analytic tool for the study of educated middle class Bengali women, both Hindu and Muslim. / text

Migration is a process that allows people to circulate from one place to another as they seek resources and search for new beginnings. The study of the South-Asian Bengali community in Canada, conducted in Southern Ontario show how women of first, second and third generation have adapted, resisted and acculturated with the Canadian mainstream. The purpose of this research is to convey the intricate connections between food and identity in the lives of Bangladeshi-Canadian women between 19-25 who call Canada their home, using participant observations and semi-structured interviewing. Food is a marker of ethnic identity in a globalized, migrant community; cultural and social issues governing the consumption of food products serve as a marker of regional, national and gender identity. In the Bengali diaspora, food is a symbol of tradition and a link to ethnic identity as younger generations of South Asian-Canadian women maintain, conserve or oppose traditional values, while engaging in identity construction. The research asks if rituals surrounding food practices still retain a traditional meaning and fulfil the same expectations or if the experiences of acculturation and immersion into mainstream Canadian society transformed the conceptions of food, gender and ethnicity construction amongst contemporary Bengali South-Asian Canadians. It will furthermore explore gendered ideologies regarding food, its consumption and transmission of social values. In the end, food and gender provide a lens through which identity construction in the diaspora is revealed.

Migration is a process that allows people to circulate from one place to another as they seek resources and search for new beginnings. The study of the South-Asian Bengali community in Canada, conducted in Southern Ontario show how women of first, second and third generation have adapted, resisted and acculturated with the Canadian mainstream. The purpose of this research is to convey the intricate connections between food and identity in the lives of Bangladeshi-Canadian women between 19-25 who call Canada their home, using participant observations and semi-structured interviewing. Food is a marker of ethnic identity in a globalized, migrant community; cultural and social issues governing the consumption of food products serve as a marker of regional, national and gender identity. In the Bengali diaspora, food is a symbol of tradition and a link to ethnic identity as younger generations of South Asian-Canadian women maintain, conserve or oppose traditional values, while engaging in identity construction. The research asks if rituals surrounding food practices still retain a traditional meaning and fulfil the same expectations or if the experiences of acculturation and immersion into mainstream Canadian society transformed the conceptions of food, gender and ethnicity construction amongst contemporary Bengali South-Asian Canadians. It will furthermore explore gendered ideologies regarding food, its consumption and transmission of social values. In the end, food and gender provide a lens through which identity construction in the diaspora is revealed.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of California, Santa Cruz, 1983. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 128-133).

Thèse de doctorat : Informatique : Nancy 1 : 2008. / Titre provenant de l'écran-titre.

This dissertation is an analysis of discursive productions of Kālīghāṭ, a Hindu temple dedicated to the goddess Kālī in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), India. It is the most famous temple in what was once the capital of the British Empire in India and what is now India's third largest city. Kālīghāṭ has a reputation for being ancient, powerful, corrupt, and dirty. This dissertation aims to discover how and why these are the adjectives most often used to describe this temple. While there are many stories that can be told about a place, and many words that can be used to characterize it, these four dominate the public discourse on Kālīghāṭ. I demonstrate in these pages that these ideas about Kālīghāṭ are not discoveries made about the site, but are instead creations of it that have been produced at certain times, according to certain discursive practices, toward certain ends.

Thesis (M.A. (Hons.))--University of Wollongong, 1999. / Typescript. Bibliography: leaf 145-150. Also available in electronic version.

Th. 3e cycle--Étud. indiennes--Paris 3, 1977.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 305-325). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.