Religious conversion and the making of identity: The case of early modern Goa

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Infosys Prize Lecture

Religious conversion and the making of identity: The case of early modern Goa

10:00 AM

February 23, 2023

RV University, Bangalore

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Religious conversion and the making of identity: The case of early modern Goa

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Assuming the socially constructed nature of identity, historian and Infosys Prize laureate, Prof. Ângela Barreto Xavier will discuss the place that conversion to Christianity under Portuguese imperial rule had in the making of Goa's political and cultural identity. Prof. Xavier will focus on local people's agency in conversion. Their attitudes included indifference, negotiation, consent, and passive and active resistance. She will consider some of the dimensions of religious conversion in the Goan case: the initial loss of personal and social identity, the anxiety of social destabilization, the construction of an in-between or new self, and the fluidity of religious belonging.

Speaker

Prof. Ângela Barreto Xavier

Senior Researcher, Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon, Portugal