About the event

Speaker: Prof. Katherine Butler Schofield

Chair: Dr Yashaswini Chandra

Abstract

James Skinner’s 1825 Tashrīh al-Aqwām depicts musician Himmat Khan as a portrait subject and ethnographic archetype – a perspective wholly irreconcilable with Himmat Khan’s own biography and writings. This lecture juxtaposes various Mughal and Company-style ethnographic paintings and texts to reveal a paracolonial indigenous modernity coexisting with British knowledge systems in late Mughal India.

Biography

Katherine Schofield (FRAS, FRHistS) is Professor of South Asian Music and History at King’s College London. A recipient of major grants from the European Research Council and British Academy, her most recent book is Music and Musicians in Late Mughal India: Histories of the Ephemeral, 1748–1858 (Cambridge 2024).

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This lecture will be hybrid. Please book your ticket for attendance in person or online.

Image credit: Miyan Himmat Khan, James Skinner, Tashrīh al-Aqwām, 1825, British Library, Add. 27,255.