Beyond liberation: students, space, and the state in East Pakistan/Bangladesh 1952-1990.

• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20406224

This dissertation examines the history of East Pakistan/Bangladesh's student movements in the postcolonial period. The principal argument is that the major student mobilizations of Dhaka University are evidence of an active student engagement with shared symbols and rituals across time and that the campus space itself has served as the linchpin of this movement culture. The category of "student" developed into a distinct political class that was deeply tied to a concept of local place in the campus; however, the idea of "student" as a collective identity also provided a means of ideological engagement with a globally imagined community of "students." Thus, this manuscript examines the case study of student mobilizations at Dhaka University in various geographic scales, demonstrating the levels of local, national and global as complementary and interdependent components of social movement culture. The project contributes to understandings of Pakistan and Bangladesh's political and social history in the united and divided period, as well as provides a platform for analyzing the historical relationship between social movements and geography that is informative to a wide range of disciplines.