The main research outputs come from work on my book manuscript, The Making of Multipolar Modernity: Britain, India, and the Sounding of Colonial Resistance. Two of the five chapters from this work will appear in peer-reviewed volumes. My second chapter, “From Punjab Trilogy to the BBC Eastern Service: The Political Critiques and Cultural Mediations of Mulk Raj Anand,” has been accepted for an edited collection of essays entitled Sound in South Asia, edited by Dr Laura Brueck, Dr Jacob Smith, and Dr Neil Verma. My third chapter, “Women’s Bodies, Women’s Voices: Venu Chitale’s Transnational Mediations on the BBC’s Home and Eastern Service,” has been accepted by Dr Justine Lloyd and Dr Jilly Kay, who are editing a special issue of Media, Culture, and Society, focused on gender and transnational broadcasting. I’ve completed a book proposal in response to an invitation from Dr Jessica Berman and Dr Paul K. Saint-Amour, editors of the Modernist Latitudes Series through Columbia University Press which they will review to consider my monograph for publication.
During the fellowship, I disseminated my research through eleven conferences and talks. Four of these were invited, two by the King’s College English Department, one at the Cross Currents: Gender and Transnational Broadcasting Workshop at Bournemouth University, and one at the Sound Cultures Symposium at Queen Mary London University. Some of the other papers were given at conferences including the Modernist Studies Association, The Modern Language Association, and the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing. The largest academic dissemination activity involved co-organizing an international gathering of radio researchers entitled The BBC and the World Service: Debts and Legacies Conference at King’s College London. The event was open to the general public and I subsequently wrote an entry for the King’s College English Department Blog that links radio research to our everyday engagement with broadcasts and podcasts.
The research methods I honed through the project formed the main content for the King’s English Department’s Doctoral Research Seminar which I redesigned and taught in 2016-2017. It’s success led the Director of Graduate Studies to adopt it as a template for the department. I also had opportunities to offer two sessions on applying for the Marie Curie Individual Fellowship for KCL early career training workshops and participate in an information day about European Research Grants organized by the European Commission.
Given the project’s focus on sound media, my main public engagement project involves making two podcasts that present material from my research and link it to our current political climate which will be available by summer 2018. The first considers a 1943 play by Mulk Raj Anand that links the Bengal Famine to Britain’s draining of India’s resources during World War II. The second considers how radio broadcasts from the seventies and eighties historicize our understanding of anti-immigrant attitudes today.
