Event Calendar
PICTORIAL PROTEST AND POLITICAL PROPHECY IN INDIA TODAY | Revisiting Political Cartooning in India
Visual Arts Colloquium Series Monsoon \'25
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Dear All,
The Department of Visual Arts is delighted to invite you to the fourth colloquium in the Visual Arts Colloquium Series, Monsoon 2025.
Title: PICTORIAL PROTEST AND POLITICAL PROPHECY IN INDIA TODAY
Revisiting Political Cartooning in India
Speaker: Prof. Christel R Devadawson
Date: October 28th, 2025. 1.30 pm
Venue: Visual Arts Studio (near sports block)
Abstract: When I worked on my book Out of Line: Cartoons, Caricature and Contemporary India, I grew to believe that political cartooning served best as analysis rather than as prophecy. I have since come to understand that the discipline of pictorial protest carries a significant charge of political prophecy, which makes it an essential if troubling presence in the public sphere. I'd like to revisit political cartooning in India after '47 to see where this line of enquiry might lead.
Bio: A Cambridge-Nehru scholar for her PhD, Christel R Devadawson is currently Professor, Department of English, University of Delhi, where she has worked since 2001. She served as Head from 2015-2018. Before moving to the University, Christel lectured at St Stephen’s College from 1986-2001. She served as Head of the English Department in college from 2000-2001.
Christel’s most recent publication in the field of Visual Studies is ‘Visual Advocacy, the Gandhi icon, and the Shaping of Contemporary India,’ in David Bulla (ed) Gandhi: Advocacy, Journalism and the Media,’ (Peter Lang, 2022). She has a chapter entitled ‘Troubling the Waters: Graphic Advocacy and the Indo-Sri Lankan Fisher Folk’s Tale,’ in an upcoming volume on South Asian visual culture. Her books include Out of line: Cartoons, Caricature and Contemporary India (Blackswan, 2014), and Reading India, writing England: The Fiction of Rudyard Kipling and E M Forster (Macmillan, 2005). With Shormishtha Panja and Shirshendu Chakrabarti she edited Word Image Text: Nature and time in literature and the visual arts (Blackswan 2009, repr 2017).
Join us for a thought-provoking talk on how India’s political cartoons have not only captured our times – but dared to predict them.
The conversation will continue over tea/coffee after the talk. See you there!
Warm regards,
Visual Arts Department