Memory, Movement, and Belonging on Mullingar Hill: Oral Histories and Heritage of a Himalayan Hill Station
Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger is Professor Emerita in the Department of Religion at Emory University. She is an ethnographer whose research projects share theoretical interests in indigenous categories, performance repertoires, and everyday, vernacular religion. One goal of her research is to bring unwritten traditions into the archive and centralise them in the study and teaching of Indian religions and cultures. Dr Flueckiger has carried out extensive fieldwork in Chhattisgarh, Hyderabad, Tirupati, and Mussoorie. Her books include: Material Acts in Everyday Hindu Worlds (2020), Everyday Hinduism (2015), When the World Becomes Female: Possibilities of a South Indian Goddess (2013), In Amma’s Healing Room: Gender & Vernacular Islam in South India (2006), and Gender & Genre in the Folklore of Middle India (1996).
This talk is drawn from Dr Flueckiger’s current book project on oral histories of shopkeepers on Mullingar Hill, in the old bazaar of the hill station of Mussoorie, whose ancestors came—and continue to come—to Mussoorie from throughout the plains of north India and the hills of Garhwal for employment opportunities. Published histories of the hill station focus primarily on its early British actors and heritage, minimising or leaving out histories and experiences of Mussoorie’s Indian residents who were so central to the establishment and continuation of the hill station. By documenting oral histories of the shopkeepers’ families—their movement in, around, and out of Mussoorie—and analysing the ways in which this widely diverse community has made Mussoorie “home” (one of their homes), the goal of the book is to include these voices in the heritage narratives of the hill station.
Date: Monday, February 12, 2024
Time: 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM
Venue: 113, School of Arts and Sciences, Ahmedabad University, Central Campus
