Affective Masculinities: From Colonial Fathers to Bachelor Banisters in India and England (19th and 20th Centuries)—New Books by BC Faculty Series

Join us for a celebration of History Professor Swapna M. Banerjee’s latest book, Fathers in the Motherland: Imagining Fatherhood in Colonial India (Oxford University Press). Banerjee will be joined by NYU History Professor Ren Pepitone. The book contends that during the late 19th- and early 20th-century India, a period of social and political change in colonial India, fathers extended their roles beyond breadwinning to take an active part in rearing their children. Exploring specific moments when educated men—as biological fathers, literary activists, and educators—assumed guardianship and became crucial agents of change, Banerjee interrogates the connections between fatherhood and masculinity. The last chapter of the book moves beyond Bengal and draws on the lives of Mohandas K. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru to provide a broader salience to its argument. Reclaiming two missing links in Indian history—fathers and children—the book argues that biological and imaginary “fathers” assumed the moral guardianship of an incipient nation and rested their hopes and dreams on the future generation.