The Virtual Cosmopolitan in the Global Colonial Order with Dr. Partha Mitter

Wednesday, October 29, 2025 from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm

• In-person event
• 303, Paterson Hall, Carleton University
• 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6
• Cost: Free

• Contact
• Ming Tiamp, ming.tiampo@carleton.ca

Presented by the College of the Humanities, the School for Studies in Art and Culture, and the Centre for Transnational Cultural Analysis, with generous support from the Centre for Hindu Studies and the Rose Maguire Lecture Series.

Abstract: Recently, intense debates have centred on the urgent issue of global connectivity in view of the imbalance between the metropolitan centre and the periphery in the post-colonial period. Central to this debate, is the idea of cosmopolitanism in light of the globalisation that began during the colonial era and that has continued to our day.  Cosmopolitanism naturally presupposes travel and privilege. But what about the mass migration of political and economic refugees who are described as ‘cosmopolitans from below’?  And what about those who stay at home and yet engage with global modernity?  It is this last category I will concentrate on today. My talk will focus on the migration of ideas and cross-cultural exchanges during the colonial period that became possible though the communication revolution, the spread of ‘hegemonic’ languages and of print culture – all of which contributed to the creation of a global ‘virtual cosmopolis.’  Finally, the paper will propose ways of communicating in our global world that is not compromised by the asymmetrical relations between centre and periphery, created through colonial dominance.   

Bio: Partha Mitter, Hon. D.Lit (Courtauld Institute, London University); Fellow Royal Society of Arts, Fellow, Association for Art and Architectural History; Emeritus Professor, Sussex University; Adjunct Research Professor Carleton University, Canada; Member, Wolfson College, Oxford. Radhakrishnan Memorial Lecturer, All Souls College, Oxford 1992. Fellowships include: Churchill College and Clare Hall, Cambridge; Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles; Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA; CASVA, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. Books include Much Maligned Monsters History of European Reactions to Indian Art, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1977, Chicago University Press 1992 (paperback) new OUP Delhi edition 2013; Art and Nationalism in Colonial India 1850-1922, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994; Indian Art, OUP Paperback 2002; The Triumph of Modernism: India’s Artists and the Avant-Garde 1922-1947, Reaktion Books, London 2007. 20^th Century Indian Art, eds, Partha Mitter, Parul Dave Mukherjee, Rakhee Balaram, Thames & Hudson, London and New York, 2023. Essay on global modern art: ‘Decentring Modernism: Art History and Avant-Garde Art from the Periphery’, Art Bulletin,Volume XC, Number 4 (December, 2008), 531-574. 

The English comic magazine Punch (above) became world famous thanks to the information revolution in the 19h century.