Sukanya Banerjee, associate professor of English at University of California-Berkeley, will speak on "Rebellion, Revolution and the Work of Loyalty."

The category of loyalty is often understood in bifurcatory terms, especially when it comes to the question of rebellion or revolution: one is either loyal or disloyal. In the process, loyalty is framed as residual in ways that are at once self-evident, opaque, and ahistorical. An attentiveness to the complex formulations of loyalty during the Indian rebellion of 1857, on the other hands, invites a reframing of loyalty, not only lending it a biography apropos to the mid-nineteenth century but also opening up possibilities to consider loyalty’s imbrication with literary protocols then in the ascendancy.