4:00 pm Panel with
Professor Alka Patel (UC Irvine) and
Professor Aditi Chandra (UC Merced)
Moderated by Professor Sugata Ray (UC Berkeley)
4:30 pm Open Discussion
This presentation-discussion examines the World Heritage designated Qutb complex in Delhi, founded in the early twelfth century but expanded, renovated, transformed, and received throughout the following millennium. By analyzing the bookends and key moments in the monument's existence, including resistance by non-elites, this conversation asks who decides how to "preserve" a monument and for whom. Does preservation at a given moment deny the monument its diverse features? Often appropriated by touristic and right-wing narratives today, we recuperate this monument's peripheral voices through its own marginalized histories. By highlighting the peripheral perspectives of one site, we see how the public monument is always in-process and in-flux, despite the attempts of those at a perceived "center" to control it.
