I was inspired to take “Past Performed” by a course I took in my first semester, “Hybrid Identities.” In this course, we have explored contemporary conflicts of identity and cultural representation through academic writings on hybridity and authenticity, personal narratives, and self-reflection. We concluded the semester with a performance inspired by our experiences trying to find and maintain an “authentic” sense of self. I was particularly interested in the personal accounts we read and the role they played in helping us understand, and ultimately creatively execute, interpretations of our identity formation. Taking the past into account seemed like the logical next step in further investigating questions of cultural identity, personal narratives, and the role of performance in retelling stories. My initial reaction to the readings we discussed at the beginning of the semester was one of surprise. I came to the course with a basic understanding of the Partition, but I had not understood the enormous scale of the demographic upheaval and communal violence that took place before 1947. As we delved further into our research, I became acutely aware of how simplified it was and my previous understanding of the partition is inaccurate. I have no memory of the conflict in India and Pakistan, the largest migration in human history and the cause of over a million deaths, ever being mentioned to me in an educational context; a fact that bothered me as we read the stories of the victims of the Partition violence (Khan, 55). The many factors that led to the escalation of the conflict and, ultimately, the brutal violence and mass displacement in 1947, were difficult for me to wrap my head around. I realized that the partition of India… is in the middle of the paper… with the reality that behind all the official stories are millions of personal stories. If we listen to the voices of individuals – their tears, their laughter and their silences – we cannot remain immune to their suffering; we cannot forget that they are human and, even if we will never understand their pain, we cannot help but try (Jha,471). Works Cited Butalia, Urvashi. The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2000. Print.Jha, Sadan. “On Listening to Violence: A Researcher's Reflections on the Partition of India.” Sarai Reader: Turbulence (2006): n. page Network. May 1, 2014.Khan, Yasmin. The Great Partition: The Creation of India and Pakistan. New Haven: Yale UP, 2007. Print.Sarkar, Mahua. "Between craft and method: meaning and intersubjectivity in the analysis of oral history". Journal of Historical Sociology 25.4 (2012): 578-600. Press.