Cult & Gender Forum Speaker Series: Richa Nagar

Storytelling and Co-authorship in Feminist Alliance Work: Reflections from a Journey 

by Richa Nagar 

University of Minnesota

25 April 2012, FASS 2034, 15.00-16.45

This talk will analyze translated excerpts from the Hindi book, Ek Aur Neemsaar, which is a diary of the Sangtin Kisaan Mazdoor Sangathan, a movement of peasants and laborers that evolved from the writing of Sangtin Yatra/ Playing with Fire. The selected pieces focus on challenging the traditional idea of “fieldwork” and expertise in academia and “development” work.

The talk is scheduled jointly by the Cultural Studies Program and the Gender and Women's Studies Forum. 

Richa Nagar currently is a lecturer at the University of Minnesota at Gender Women and Sexuality Studies teaching politics on development, feminism and practice and people’s movements. She scholarly writes in the areas of on understanding the politics and processes associated with empowerment projects focused on women and the poor, and the ways in which multiple hierarchies associated with these can be interrupted through collaborative knowledge production and dissemination across the borders of North/South, academia/activism, and elite/"vernacular” languages is highly respected in the academia. Richa Nagar’s latest book Playing with Fire has recently been translated into Turkish and published by Ayizi Yayıncılık (Ateşle Oynamak, 2011). The book has already been received with great interest in the gender studies community and by women’s organizations across Turkey.