Kamalpreet Kaur

Email: kamalpreet.kaur@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk

Thesis Title

Starving Bodies, Disappearing Flesh: Hunger Strikes as a Mode of Political Resistance in Colonial and Postcolonial India

Institution

Department of History, The University of Manchester

Supervisors

Prof Anindita Ghosh (History)
Dr Emilia Terracciano (Art History and Cultural Practice)

Research Summary

My PhD project will delve into colonial and postcolonial histories of hunger strikes in South Asia. This work will consider case studies from different contexts to explore how the body came to be construed as 1.) a dominant site for disrupting state power, 2.) a socio-cultural performance in agential experiments, and 3.) an object to be disciplined by medical sciences. I am especially curious about prison as a site where such modalities of bodily resistance might be the only recourse for a protester and would explore the same through visual, oral and textual sources.

Research Interests

Colonial State, Hunger Strikes, Resistance, Prisons, Force Feeding

Publications

Coming soon