মেয়ে ডাক্তার: মেয়েলি ডাক্তারি / Female Doctor: Feminine Practice | A Presentation by Barun Chattopadhyay | Project Showcase@IFA | April 28, 2022

India Foundation for the Arts (IFA)
invites you to
মেয়ে ডাক্তার: মেয়েলি ডাক্তারি / Female Doctor: Feminine Practice
A presentation by Barun Chattopadhyay
followed by a discussion with Sanchayan Ghosh
(The session will be conducted in Bangla and English)

Thursday, April 28, 2022 | 06:30 PM - 07:30 PM IST | Zoom and Facebook Live

How can experimental fiction-writing in Bangla be embellished with explorations in book-making? How does a writer collaborate with a contemporary artist and printmaker? How can the ephemeral medical tools used in alternative medicine in the early 19th century be brought together in the form of an assemblage? What can a series of Bangla short stories about the travails of Bengal’s first women doctors tell us about science, gender and the art of healing?  

Join us to listen to Barun talk about experimental fiction-writing in Bangla as a counterpoint to Anglophonic colonial modernity. His project highlights the stories of alternative medical practices of communities with female medical practitioners, like those of Jnanadakinis, Chandals, Namasudras, and the Malbadiyas, as well as the Doms, Muchis, and Methors. Barun will critique the hypermasculinity in the narrative of modern medical science by offering fictional imaginations derived from the contributions of female doctors, in a speculative literary form that can be termed alternative medical theory fiction. 

Barun Chattopadhyay is a Bangla fiction-writer and an educator, who completed his PhD thesis in Bangla from the University of Calcutta. 

Sanchayan Ghosh is a contemporary artist and an educator, who is an Associate Professor in the Department of Painting at Kala Bhavan, Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan.

Barun Chattopadhyay received a grant from IFA in 2017-18 under the Arts Practice programme.

This session is organised as part of the Project Showcase @ IFA, a series of online presentations to showcase, discuss and engage audiences with the diverse projects we support and implement across programmes. 

Image Credits: Barun Chattopadhyay and Sanchayan Ghosh

Click here to register for the discussion on Zoom.

The discussion will also be streamed live on our Facebook page, for which no prior registration is required.