Hello! Welcome to my Humanities portfolio. This is a reflection of my engagement with and my understanding of the Humanities over my first year at Davidson College.
The lens through which I view the Humanities is largely shaped by the fact that I am international student from Kolkata, India. This defines the way in which I understand the world and my place in it. My analysis of the humanities is rooted in my identity as a postcolonial subject. I draw from my personal experiences and subjectivity to interpret the various artifacts we have studied.
I believe that there needs to be a change in the way we tell stories in the Humanities, and in the narrative of history that we present. The popular narrative is limited to the Western perspective. I believe that the way in which we understand the Humanities needs to evolve to better represent ways of knowing the world that differ from Western epistemology, which I have attempted to do in my portfolio.
The theme for this course is ‘Revolution’, which is why I chose an image of what to me is a revolutionary moment in Indian History as my header. The picture depicts the all-female Rani of Jhansi regiment of the “Azad Hind Fauz”, an army led by Subhash Chandra Bose to rid India of the British rule and organize the governance of the country on Marxist lines. The regiment is named after Rani Laxmibai, the Queen of the province of Jhansi, who fought against the British in the Revolt of 1857.
