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Abstract: Given the diverse geographies, societies and cultures that imperial frontier making encompasses, how would one write cultural history of such a frontier making process? Focusing on British Assam, the discussion highlights how studying entanglements of frontier making and cultural forms (such as, memoirs, ballads, etc.) can provide interesting conceptual scope in this regard. It can also help us understand how, vis-à-vis such processes of frontier making, cultural forms acquire their textual character not only through ruptures and limits but also as bearers of new meanings.      

Bio: Manjeet Baruah teaches at Special Centre for the Study of North East India, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His areas of research interest include literary and cultural history, text and space, and frontiers and borderlands. His recent works include, Hunter, Peasant, Rebel: Colonialism and the British Assam Frontier (Routledge, 2024). His works of translation include the novel, Remains of Spring: A Naga Village in the No Man's Land (OUP, 2016).