Upcoming Lecture
"Bureaucracy and Masculinity in India after Independence"
Prof. Inderpal Grewal, Yale University
Thursday, Feb. 28, 2013
5:00pm
Shapiro Admissions Center
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
Keely Swan
Coordinator
South Asian Studies Program / Brandeis-India Initiative
Mandel 125
southasianstudies@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.
Spring 2013 Lecture - Upcoming!
"Bureaucracy and Masculinity in India after Independence"
Prof. Inderpal Grewal from Yale University
Thursday, February 28th at 5:00pm
Shapiro Admissions Center, Presentation Room
Our Spring 2013 lecture will feature Professor Inderpal Grewal from the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department at Yale University. Her research interests include transnational feminist theory; gender and globalization, human rights; NGO’s and theories of civil society; theories of travel and mobility; South Asian cultural studies, and postcolonial feminism. She is the author of Home and Harem: Nation, Gender, Empire and the Cultures of Travel (Duke University Press, 1996) and Transnational America: Feminisms, Diasporas, Neoliberalisms (Duke University Press, 2005). Currently she is working on a book length project on the relation between feminist practices and security discourses.
Fall 2012 Lecture
"Constructing Fictions: Prose, Politics, and Pakistan"
Author, Mohsin Hamid
Wednesday, October 17, 2012 at 5:00pm
Mandel Center Forum
Our Fall 2012 lecture will feature Mohsin Hamid, author of the novels Moth Smoke, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and the forthcoming How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia. His fiction has been translated into over 30 languages, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, featured on bestseller lists, and adapted for the cinema. His short stories have appeared in Granta and the Paris Review, and his essays in the Guardian, the New York Times, and the New York Review of Books. Born in 1971, he has lived about half his life, on and off, in Lahore.
Spring 2012 Lecture
"Gender and Forest Governance: A History of Absence, the Impact of Presence"
March 19, 2012
Our Spring 2012 lecture featured prize-winning economist Bina Agarwal, Director and Professor of Economics at the Institute of Economic Growth, New Delhi, India. Ms. Agarwal gave an inspiring lecture in Rapaporte Treasure Hall, Goldfarb Library, drawing upon her most recent book, Gender and Green Governance. She spoke of the historical absence of women from forest governance and in particular the impact of women's presence in making a significant change in environmental preservation.
We regret that streaming video is not available for this lecture.
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.
Video of the lecture
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."