| SOUTH ASIAN FEMINISMS: GENDER, CULTURE AND POLITICS This interdisciplinary international conference on South Asian Feminisms will bring together distinguished scholars/activists both within and outside the academy, from the subcontinent (Nepal, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka) as well as the US, UK, and Canada. Our focus will be the contemporary dynamics of feminist activism and theorizing in the region, with particular emphasis on violence, human rights, and minorities. These are issues of vital concern across the region and within the South Asian diaspora. We envision stimulating discussions about the promises and difficulties of feminist legal activism and of human rights discourse for feminist concerns, especially as they engage issues of caste, religion, ethnicity, sexuality and class; the relationship between feminism and movements for democracy; forms of gendered violence; and the impact of transnationalism and globalization on feminist movements within and outside the region. The conference will pay sustained attention to the specificities of these issues within different contexts that constitute "South Asia", but also encourages conversations across these contexts, reaching out to the shared, unequal, and overlapping histories of the region. Distinguished participants will include: Ratna Kapur, Director of the Centre for Feminist Legal Research in New Delhi, India and Senior Gender Advisor to Nepal, United Nations; Malathi De Alwis, International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Colombo, Sri Lanka; Flavia Agnes, leading feminist scholar, women's rights lawyer, co-founder of Majlis, Mumbai, India; Firdaus Azim, Professor, BRAC University and activist, Nari Pokko, Dhaka, Bangladesh; Angana Chatterjee, Associate Professor, California Institute of Integral Studies; Amina Jamal, Assistant Professor, Ryerson University, Toronto, CA; Anjali Arondekar, Associate Professor, University of California, Santa Cruz; Dina Siddiqi, Independent Scholar, New York/Dhaka, Bangladesh; Priyamvada Gopal, cultural analyst and literary critic, Cambridge University, UK; Annanya Bhattacharjee, co- founder, Sakhi (New York) and International Organizer for Jobs with Justice (New Delhi, India/Washington, DC, US). The Conference Committee gratefully acknowledges support and sponsorship from the following: the Provost's Global Initiatives Fund, the South Asia Center, the Alice Paul Center/Women's Studies Program, the University Research Fund, the School of Arts and Sciences Dean's Office, the Graduate School of Education, the Department of English, the Center for the Advanced Study of India, and the Department of Anthropology. |