Keynote: Professor Homi Bhabha, Harvard University

Globally renowned Harvard professor, Homi Bhabha, will be delivering a lecture titled “Thoughts on Diasporic Cosmopolitanism” at Carleton on Thursday March 9 at 1:15 pm at the 400-seat Singhal Family Theatre in Richcraft Hall. The talk is the keynote address of the 2nd international Ismaili Studies Conference organized by Communication professor, Karim H. Karim, in his capacity as director of the Carleton Centre for the Study of Islam. We are reading a book by Bhabha in my new graduate course on Cultural Intersections and I looked for a way to bring the author to Carleton.

Homi K. Bhabha is the Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities, Director of the Mahindra Humanities Center, and Senior Advisor to the President and Provost at Harvard University. He was a master jurist for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2007, and served on the Award’s Steering Committee from 2008-2013. Professor Bhabha is the author of numerous works exploring postcolonial theory, cultural change and power, contemporary art, and cosmopolitanism, including Nation and Narration, and The Location of Culture, which was reprinted as a Routledge Classic in 2004. He most recently published an essay in ArtForum, and has a forthcoming book on contemporary art with the University of Chicago Press.

Professor Bhabha is a member of the Academic Committee for the Shanghai Power Station of Art, and the Mobilising the Humanities Initiating Advisory Board (British Council), an advisor on the Contemporary and Modern Art Perspectives (C-MAP) project at the Museum of Modern Art New York, and a Trustee of the UNESCO World Report on Cultural Diversity.  He holds honorary degrees from Université Paris 8, University College London, and the Free University Berlin. In 2012 he was conferred the Government of India’s Padma Bhushan Presidential Award in the field of literature and education, and received the Humboldt Research Prize in 2015.