FEMINIST INTERVENTIONS: RETHINKING SOUTH ASIA

Conference Schedule
May 3-4, 2002
Kresge College159, University of California, Santa Cruz

This conference intervenes in current geo-political formations of South Asia through an investigation of issues of social justice, legal jurisprudence and religious intolerance in the region. In doing so, we seek to explore what constitutes the subjects and studies of the terrain of "South-Asia," especially within the current volatile political atmosphere in the region. Central to the mutually informing discourses of gender and history in rethinking the concept-metaphor of "South Asia" will be an added discussion of questions of borders, diasporas, migrations, nationalisms and militarisms to name a select few.

Friday, May 3, 2002

9:30 a.m. Breakfast

10:00 a.m. Introduction: Anjali Arondekar, UCSC

10:15 a.m. Panel I: Feminisms and the State

"Am I that Name? Feminism and the Category of ‘Women’ in a Colonial Public Sphere"
Mrinalini Sinha, Penn State

"Feminist Organizing in Sri Lanka"
Malathi de Alwis, New School

"Always Nationalize; or, Some Methodological Considerations on Analyses of the Nation and the State"
Radhika Mongia, UCSC

12:15 p.m Lunch

1:15 p.m. Panel II: Sodometries

"Secular Sodometries and the Indian Penal Code"
Anjali Arondekar, UCSC

"Sexual Aliens: South Asian Migration and Law in North America, 1900-1940"
Nayan Shah, UCSD

"Re-scaling Transnational Queerdom: Some 1980s’ "Lesbian" and Lesbian Identitary-Positionalities in Delhi"
Paola Bacchetta, University of Kentucky

3:15 p.m Coffee Break

3:30 p.m. Panel III: Corporealities

"Operability, Bio-Availability and Exception: Observations on Family Planning, Organ Transplantation and Recent Elections"
Lawrence Cohen, UC-Berkeley

"Reliving Childhood? The Temporality of Childhood and Narratives of Reincarnation"
Akhil Gupta, Stanford University

(Dinner Reception for participants to follow at 7:00 p.m.)

Saturday, May 4, 2002

8:30 a.m. Breakfast

9:00 a.m. Panel IV: Diasporic Mediations

"Unveiling Citizens: South Asian Muslim Immigrant Youth in the Aftermath of 9/11"
Sunaina Maira, University of Massachusetts

"Everybody Needs a Bosom for a Pillow? Nostalgia, Nationalism and New British Asian Music"
Gayatri Gopinath, UC Davis

"Piercing the Veil"
Madhavi Sunder, UC Davis Law School

10:30 a.m. Coffee Break

11:00 a.m. Panel V: Visual Cultures

"Screening Culture"
Purnima Mankekar, Stanford University

"Village India in Victorian Space: Colonial History and Cultural Display"
Saloni Mathur, UCLA

"Of Cloud-Capped Stars and Moth Eaten Dawns: Secularism’s Melancholia"
Bhaskar Sarkar, UCSB

12:30 p.m. Lunch

1:30 p.m. Panel VI: Literatures

"Of Fictional Cities and Diasporic Aesthetics"
Rosemary George, UCSD

"Gender, Desire and Names: The Poetics of Translation in Adela Cory Nicholson"
Anindyo Roy, Colby College

"Ghostliness as Cultural Practice: The "Lakhan Stories" of the Calcutta Chromosome"
Bishnupriya Ghosh, UC-Davis

"Recuperating Voices: Women’s Writing in South Asia"
Mahua Sarkar, SUNY-Binghamton

3:30 p.m. Coffee Break

4:00 p.m. Panel VII: Feminist Research: Futures of the Field

Roundtable Discussion with Indrani Chatterjee (Rutgers University), Raka Ray (UC-Berkeley) , Parama Roy (UC Riverside) , Geeta Patel (Wellesley College) and Kamala Visweswaran (UT-Austin)
Moderator: Rosemary George (UCSD)

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