EP8: What You Look For is What You Find
Yves and Clare are joined by Samia Khatun, historian, filmmaker, and senior lecturer at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. Samia’s latest book, Australianama: The South Asian Odyssey in Australia (2019) takes aim at the claim that the knowledge traditions of Enlightened man have superseded the epistemologies of peoples colonised by European empires. Are the archives themselves the problem, or the questions we ask of them? The group discusses an extraordinary discovery in the middle of the Australian outback, the historian’s power of time travel, and the potential of the dream archive.
Front cover of Samia Khatun’s Australianama: The South Asian Odyssey in Australia.
Purchase Australianama: https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/australianama/
Yves Rees, Clare Wright and Samia Khatun recording Archive Fever.
Samia Khatun on colonial time (video)
Samia’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/SamiaKhatun
SOAS staff page: https://www.soas.ac.uk/staff/staff142799.php