Why and how do debates about the form and disposition of our Earth shape enlightened subjectivity and secular worldliness in colonial modernity? Sumathi Ramaswamy explores this question for British India with the aid of the terrestrial globe, which since the sixteenth century has circulated as a worldly symbol, a scientific instrument, and not least an educational tool for inculcating planetary consciousness. In Terrestrial Lessons, Ramaswamy provides the first in-depth analysis of the globe’s history in and impact on the Indian subcontinent during the colonial era and its aftermath. Drawing on a wide array of archival sources, she delineates its transformation from a thing of distinction possessed by elite men into that mass-produced commodity used in classrooms worldwide—the humble school globe. Traversing the length and breadth of British India, Terrestrial Lessons is an unconventional history of this master object of pedagogical modernity that will fascinate historians of cartography, science, and Asian studies.

Contesting the idea that the study of Anglophone literature and literary studies is simply a foreign import in Asia, this collection addresses the genealogies of textual critique and institutionalized forms of teaching of English language and literature in Asia through the 19th and 20th centuries, along with an examination of how its present options and possible future directions relate to these historical contexts. It argues that the establishment of Anglophone literature in Asia did not simply “happen”: there were extra-literary and -academic forces at work, inserting and domesticating in Asian universities both the English language and Anglo-American literature, and their attendant cultural and political values. Offering new perspectives for ongoing conversations surrounding the globalization of Anglophone literature in literary and cultural studies, the book also considers the practicalities of teaching both the language and its canon of classic texts, and that the historical formation and shape of English studies in Asia offers lessons that relate not only to the discipline but also may be applied to the humanities as a whole. ​

Beyond Macaulay provides a radical and comprehensive history of Indian education in the early colonial era from 1780 to 1860. It critically explores data of 16,000 indigenous schools, which shows that indigenous education was not oral, informal, and Brahmin-centric but written, formal, and egalitarian. Based on rich archival evidence, the book challenges the conventional theory that the British administration imposed the English language and modern education on Indians. By including hitherto unused 41 Educational Minutes of Macaulay, the volume examines his educational ideas, his insistence on compulsory teaching of Indian languages in English schools, his encouragement of the Hindi language, his opposition to making Arabic as a medium of instruction in medical and technical education opens up hither to unknown perspectives on Orientalist-Modernist debates. Contrasting the educational ideas of the British elites and the Orientalists with dissenting Scottish voices, it shows that the colonial administration was not monolithic. The book discusses post-Macaulayan educational policies, closing down of Macaulay’s schools and the Wood’s Despatch of 1854 as well as how people protected English schools during the revolt of 1857. This second edition is supplemented with complete student essays which reveal the students’ use of the English language, classical imageries, the debates in Europe and finally, their own location in Indian society. The essays by upper caste, OBC and Dalit students demonstrate their extraordinary competency and command over the English language. The book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of education, history of education, Indian history, the history of English language teaching in India, sociology, and political science.

Vol. 1-new ser., v. 7 include the society's Proceedings for 1841-1929 (title varies)