Upcoming Lecture
Spring 2012: Bina Agarwal
March 19, 2012
5:30 pm, Rapaporte Treasure Hall
Agarwal is a prize-winning feminist economist who studies gender, development, and agriculture in India and throughout South Asia. She writes about changing the framework of traditional economics to include women and implicit power relationships in decision making found in patriarchical societies. More details to come!
Lecture Summaries
Lecture faculty and staff coordinators
Prof. Harleen Singh
South Asian Studies/ Comparative Literature/ Women and Gender Studies
Mandel 114
781-736-8485
harleen@brandeis.edu
Kayla Dinces '12
Conference Assistant
ASAC 308
781-736-5642
kdinces@brandeis.edu
Soli Sorabjee Lectures in South Asian Studies
This lecture series engages with themes of "justice" -- broadly defined to include the interrogation of human rights, historical narratives, literary and political representations, gender and social justice, citizenship and democracy, and cross-border connections between the nations of South Asia. Our goal is to expose students at Brandeis (and the larger public) to the scholarship being conducted in the multidisciplinary fields of South Asian Studies, both in the United States and in South Asia itself, as well as to the vast range of South Asian intellectual and artistic traditions. The series is sponsored by the South Asian Studies Program and the Brandeis-India Initiative. It was named after the honorable Soli J. Sorabjee, former attorney general of India and a friend of Brandeis University.
Fall 2011 Lecture
"Racialized Communalisms, Criminalized Queers, and the Police in Contemporary India"
November 2, 2011
Our Fall 2011 Lecture featured Professor Jyoti Puri, sociology professor at Simmons College. She lectured to a packed atrium in the Mandel Center for the Humanities, on her fieldwork among police in New Delhi. Her presentation explored the enforcement of sodomy law, or Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. She analyzed the discourses through which Delhi police name some groups as consistently queer and criminal even while allowing for the possibility of the decriminalization of homosexuality.
Spring 2011 Lecture
"The Day Our Probation Ended"
March 3, 2011
Our Spring 2011 lecture featured acclaimed author Vijay Prashad, George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian History and Professor of International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford. Professor Prashad gave a rousing lecture at Rapaporte Treasure Hall, Goldfarb Library on the desi communities reaction to 9/11 and subsequent events.
Video of the lecture
Fall 2010 Lecture
"Experiments with Truth: Confronting Colonial History in Popular Indian Cinema"
Prof. Corey Creekmur from the University of Iowa
October 28,2010
Our Fall 2010 lecture featured Professor Corey Creekmur, head of Film Studies at the University of Iowa, and an expert in international popular cinema. Professor Creekmur lectured in front of a crowd of over 100 in the Mandel Center for the Humanities on the recent portrayal of colonial history in Indian cinema.
Video of the lecture
Special Spring Lecture
"Rule of Law: A Moral Imperative for South Asia and the World"
Delivered by Soli Sorabjee
April 14, 2010
Our Spring 2010 lecture featured a special visit by Mr. Sorabjee to Brandeis. Mr. Sorabjee delivered an inspiring speech to a packed crowd in Rapaporte Treasure Hall on how the "rule of law" has been applied across India and elsewhere to moderate the forces of extremism and tyranny.
An Interview with Soli Sorabjee
Video of the lecture (temporarily unavailable)
Spring Lecture
"An Evening with Filmmaker/Writer Paromita Vohra"
February 25, 2010
The spring lecture was held on February 25, 2010. Our guest was Paromita Vohra, one of India's leading documentary filmmakers. Ms. Vohra screened two of her recent films, met with students, and answered questions from the audience.
The co-sponsors for this event included the Department of English, the South Asian Studies Program, the Program in Women's and Gender Studies and the Program in Cultural Production.
An Interview with Paromita Vohra
Inaugural Fall Lecture
"Different Universalisms, Colorful Cosmopolitanisms: The Global Imagination of the Colonized"
Prof. Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs, Harvard University
November. 16, 2009
The inaugural lecture was held on November 16, 2009. Prof. Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs at Harvard University, delivered a lecture entitled "Different Universalisms, Colorful Cosmopolitanisms: The Global Imagination of the Colonized."