With a focus on the Hindu/Presidency College, this book offers new ways of doing histories of education in colonial and postcolonial historical settings. Each essay utilizes new archival materials to present “liberal arts” education as an arena of competition, conversation, the rise of new disciplines, and politics. The everyday life of the College comes alive in a set of interdisciplinary essays that analyse different aspects of the institution's existence from student publications to the challenges of under-funding. Together, they shed new light on the daily labour and strife as well as the work of the imagination that shaped a centre of excellence. Excellence, however, was also premised upon social, cultural, and financial exclusions that cannot be ignored as we write new global histories of education and intellectual life in postcolonial India. The volume offers vital historical insight into the survival and challenges faced by an educational institution that is salutary as higher education, globally, faces unprecedented challenges.
